


The Wanted

by SyllableFromSound



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Thieves, Alternate Universe - Western, Bandits & Outlaws, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Mutual Pining, Non-Graphic Violence, Nonbinary Character, Trans Female Character, Trauma, Wilderness Survival, but 'bane' is an objectively cooler spelling, do NOT @ me about the spelling of bane's name, i know what it's supposed to be
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:08:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 32,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27878881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SyllableFromSound/pseuds/SyllableFromSound
Summary: "They had nearly as many names as they had stories told about them. Ram. Raven. Red. Devil. Deputy. Outlaw. Short 'n Long. Ghosts of the Rapids."Hurley's a bounty hunter, the Raven is an outlaw, and the desert is a lonely place.(The 50k+ Old West Hurloane AU Where Hurley Becomes A Thief Too that no one asked for. Edited and reposted from an old version of the story--more significant changes to come in later chapters. T for non-graphic violence and discussions of death/injury/trauma.)
Relationships: Hurley/Sloane (The Adventure Zone)
Comments: 38
Kudos: 14





	1. Poor Wayfaring Stranger

**Author's Note:**

> Look, idk, I'm a lesbian and I love Hurloane and when I was 8 I watched the movie Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron every day for 2 months, so in some ways I think this was inevitable.
> 
> So hey! This is an updated version of the fic that I wrote for the 2019 TAZ Bang. I've been wanting to make changes to it for a long time, so I'm very excited to finally be able to post. As I said in the summary, the first 7 or so chapters will have more minor changes from the original, while the story changes in more specific ways later on. Also, the first ~8 chapters are already completed except for very small edits, so I will be able to update regularly for at least the next few months!
> 
> Thanks very much for clicking on my weird little passion project. I really appreciate everyone who reads my multi-chapter works in particular, whether you're totally new to the project or you've read the previous version before. Enjoy, and please review if you care to!

_ They had nearly as many names as they had stories told about them.  _

_ Ram. Raven. Red. Devil. Deputy. Outlaw. Short 'n Long. Ghosts of the Rapids.  _

_ What happened to them depends on who you ask. Some say the Raven twisted the Ram, but then again, the Ram might have been born with badness in the marrow of their bones. They say the outlaw was a thief, that her glittering horde still lies somewhere out in the desert among the canyons. They say the deputy was a sharpshooter with twenty notches on their pistol, one for every man who tried to take them. They say they were very much in love. _

_ Maybe they still are. People who camp alone by the river say at night, they hear too-loud whispers over the rush.  _

_ If you ask the only man who was there that day, he'll tell you the same thing every time, and nothing more: "They went over the cliff and into the river. Never found the bodies." _

_ He won't tell you whether they were dead before they hit the water. He won't even tell you whether they were shot at all. Maybe, as some say, the two of them just tipped, hand-in-hand, falling backwards over the edge together as children let themselves fall into soft grass. _

* * *

"I don't give a rat's ass what Bane said. She so much as looks at me wrong, I'm shooting."

Hurley heard the murmuring and looked over their shoulder. The two men were lagging, their mounts clopping along at a lackadaisical pace. Barbra and Lil' Jerry rode side-by-side and leaned toward each other in their saddles as they spoke in what could charitably be called a whisper. Hurley slowed their own horse a bit to get closer and listen.

"Yeah, as if you'd live long enough to press the trigger," Lil' Jerry snickered in response. "You couldn't outdraw a tin can."

"Oh, fuck off! I take care of myself fine."

"Ah, whatever."

"Besides, I'll have my gun drawn the whole time we're giving chase. I'm not taking chances on this one. You've heard the stories. Even saw the blood in one of those train cars that one time, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember," Lil' Jerry muttered.

"Everyone's quicker on the trigger when they know their gun's the only thing between them and the Big Sleep," Barbra declared. "That's just survival instinct."

"That poor Abernathy fuck wasn't. Quicker, that is."

"That doesn't mean you just wave a gun around if there's nothing in sight to shoot," Hurley piped up. They took more than a little satisfaction in how the two men looked at them, first with surprise and then with frustration, as if they'd really thought they were getting away with something. 

"We weren't talking to you."

"You might as well have been. You were loud enough. Bane told us we have to start moving quietly. The Raven's probably in this area."

"Trust you to do whatever he tells you." Hurley bristled as Lil' Jerry went on, "This is only your first time out, so we don't need you telling us what to do with our mouths or our guns."

"I know my way around a gun just fine, and you know tha--"

"All of you," said a deep voice, causing Hurley to stop instantly, "would be better off if you paid more attention to what's around you instead of whatever bullshit you're going on about."

Hurley said, "Sorry" while the boys behind them mumbled the word vaguely. At once, they prompted their horse to pick up speed and catch up with Bane as he led the way. 

When they had been riding alongside him for a few minutes, he leaned their way a little. "Though I would say," he started conspiratorially, "having seen both of you at target practice, I trust you to point a pistol the right way quite a bit more than I trust Barbra."

They snickered a little. "I'd hope so, Sheriff."

"You've got a head on your shoulders, even if you've got to be reminded to use it now and again." They looked down and smiled a little sheepishly, though the way he said it made it sound more compliment than critique. "The problem is that anyone can take a look at a thousand-dollar 'wanted' poster and suddenly decide they're a bounty hunter. They try to be heroes.”

"I don't suppose a lot of bravado does you much good out here."

"Oh, no, it can. You need to be tougher in the face of some damn tough criminals. Another reason I think you'll be good to have around." He was grinning. "But the people who come in guns blazing are also the ones who turn tail the quickest when things get to be too much for them."

"You won't have that problem with me, sir."

"No, I don't think I will. I've known you long enough to know you're here because you want to put things right. I think you and I could do that back at home, too."

"It needs it. Goldcliff's broken, if you ask me."

"Hey, now, that's my town you're talking about."

"I'm sorry. I don't mean it that way. It's just I've seen so many people there try to cheat and hustle and steal ever since I came there, and now this...murdering a man on his own doorstep in the middle of the afternoon." They shook their head. "I can't stand it."

"You don't have to. You can help stop it if you want."

"I do. And I think I'll have a much better chance of doing it with you and the law. No more of me challenging cheaters to tavern fights to sort them out," they said with a small laugh. "Thank you again, by the way, for letting me come out here with you."

He nodded before turning to address the whole group. "We're about to enter the canyon. Be careful how you go, now. It echoes in there."

Their heart began to bounce inside their chest as they thought of facing their quarry. Their horse sped up to a trot. 

“Hurley.” 

They looked behind them to find a stern-faced Bane and a posse that had stopped moving altogether. Trying to swallow down the blush working up their face, they got back in line behind Bane. 

The four moved single-file as they made their way downward. By the time they reached the bottom, there was still no activity, not so much as a lizard skittering through the grit on the ground. Quiet filled up the gaps between the stone walls, washed over them like the long-dead rivers that had once carved out these canyons. All they could hear was the clacking of the horses' footfalls, thrown back at them louder.

At various points, Bane sometimes whispered, more often simply signalled with his hands for one of them to break off and explore another path. They would return empty-handed.

Now, Bane held up a hand for them all to stop. Hurley heard, then, just for a moment, the sound of hoofbeats that belonged to none of their rides. With the way sound played off the stone, they couldn’t determine how far it was. 

It kept coming as none of them moved, noise bouncing and skipping off the walls like a mockery. Sometimes distant, sometimes nearer, sometimes seemingly next to their ears. The canyon was sinuous and full of unexpected branches and side-paths. They tried to pinpoint the source of the noises that seemed to come from everywhere, from out of the ether. 

Or they did until a resounding bang interrupted. It made a couple of the horses spook and rear as it blasted apart the near-silence. This time, it wasn't hard to tell that it came directly from behind.

Everyone else turned to see Barbra holding the smoking gun, looking more shocked than anyone.

"For fuck's sake, Barb," Lil' Jerry muttered.

And then a flash of dark around a corner. 

Their galloping set the whole place rumbling as they all shot off. Hurley’s horse nearly skittered on the sand several times as they whipped the reins sharply to the side. It was what was necessary to wind through the narrow passages that curled deeper and deeper into the canyon.

Whenever there was a widening of the path that might allow more than one horse through at a time, Hurley tried to shove past the others. They had to be up front. They could barely see anything past Bane, leading at the front and shouting things they couldn’t hear.

He grabbed his lasso as they came around one bend. There was nothing on his face except the same solid determination as usual, only sharpened. 

The posse pulled around the corner and came to an instant halt, scraping hooves stirring sand. Hurley craned their neck to see the dead end at the end of this passage, a sheer wall of redstone. But no Raven.

Not until there was sound well behind the whole group as the dark form reappeared and shot off in the other direction.

"Dammit," he spat as he yanked the reins back hard and turned his horse around. "Stay together!"

Hurley kept pace with the rest of the group, until they didn't. By degrees, they drew their horse back into a canter, then a slow trot. As expected, the others were too fixated on their path to notice that they were losing Hurley, as they leaned low over the manes of their galloping animals. The posse twisted around a sharp corner and out of their sight.

_ You're thinking with your belly again,  _ they heard their mother say, while she poked the round ball of their seven-year-old tummy.

None of them were about to outpace the Raven while she stayed three turns ahead of them. She knew the canyon, maybe so well that she knew where her pursuers were just by hearing the echo of them along the red stone walls. But if just one of them could out-maneuver...

They bid their horse to turn around and move at a quiet walk. This was not a betrayal of Bane's orders, they convinced themself. Not really, anyway. Maybe he had told them to keep up with the group, but surely the higher order was to find the thief. If they did that, he could forgive the unconventional methods.

And they would do it.

They started to pick their way through the tangle of paths. The Raven had traveled back this way, running in front of the posse, only to disappear around a bend and re-emerge behind them all. This, perhaps, was where a number of the narrow natural trails converged. They might part only to circle back and rejoin each other elsewhere. If that were true, she would be likely to stay near the place where she had a number of exit routes. This was where she expected she'd be safe. 

They chose their directions nearly at random, only knowing that they wanted to roughly parallel the path that their team had been taking before. They could meet up with them and maybe head the Raven off, if they could only keep track of where the others might be. They went left, left again, right. When they reached a slot-like passage in the rock face too narrow for a horse, they bit their lip, then dismounted and left the gelding behind as they sidled sideways through.

Occasionally, the others' calls and the pounding of their horses' hooves would come to Hurley, and they would stop to hear more. By then, though, the echoes would have already receded. They still had no way of knowing where the source of the sounds could be found--they got bounced around and lost in the network of paths until they seemed entirely disembodied. They might as well have been the chattering of specters wafting their way through the cavernous, lonely canyon. Right, left. No route here was distinct from the rest. For all they knew, they were wearing circles into the sand. 

Right, right again, and then, suddenly, no further. They pulled themself back behind a boulder and instinctively clapped a hand over their mouth. It was some time before they were able to make themself crane their neck back around, to determine whether they had seen what they'd thought they'd seen.

From behind, they saw a figure sitting atop her steed. Long black duster turned sepia by the caked-on dust of the desert and a wide-brimmed, jet bolero with a sharp feather sticking up straight from the hatband. She was still. Just waiting.

Their mouth felt dry. At some point, they realized that it was gaping open, and they snapped it shut. The clack of their teeth sounded far too loud in their mouth. 

They took a single step around the large stone that they hid behind. The half-elf's ears swiveled around and moved to pick up on sound. They seemed to fixate on nothing, though. Certainly, she didn't look Hurley's way as they gripped the long rope and positioned it in their hands. Their every movement was measured now. With every scrape of the rough hemp coil against their fingers, they felt certain that she would turn around, but she didn't. Another step, placed on the ground deliberately. The sand did not crunch beneath them. 

From where they stood behind the boulder, they did not have a clear shot at her, but they did not dare step out fully into the open. They could still get her, though. They would still get her. It probably should have been fear that sent the eager blood blazing through them--the fear that she would see them and be gone in an instant, the fear that they would be gone in an instant when she spun to blow them away--but that wasn't it. This was the familiar thrill of the final blow and the bullseye. It ran through them whenever they knew they were about to prove what they could do. They clenched their lasso as the world shrunk to what was right in front of them. What was right in front of them was an opportunity.

They threw. The Raven had a half-second to look at the loop that had snapped tight around her ankle before Hurley pulled with all they could, and down she went to the ground. When she impacted, it was with a choked noise that might have been a yell, had the wind not been punched out of her lungs. 

They almost wanted to cheer as her horse spooked and ran off.

But then they turned to look at just what it was they had caught. The figure at the end of their tether lay on her back for several moments, unmoving. For a moment, they wondered if she had been stunned by a blow to the head. They saw that, certainly, she was still hurting from the way her spine had slammed into the baked-hard earth. Low, creaking groans came from the back of her throat along with her exhales.

Suddenly, as though startled awake, her eyes snapped wide open to the sky. She scrambled to push herself onto her elbows and look at the place where her ride had been, then spun her whole body around to face Hurley.

There was a bandana tied around her face, black and patterned with feathers, puffing out slightly with every breath. It covered up everything except her eyes, but the eyes were enough. Now unshielded by the hat that had fallen from her head, they snatched Hurley's gaze and held it tight. They were big, for one thing, and youthful, with the cool-toned brown skin around them unlined. What hit them, though, was how they went wide and got wider, caught bare and off-guard. Like they took in everything and understood none of it. Disbelief at being brought down so far and so fast.

They matched her gaze. They might have been smiling. Hurley liked making people believe they could do things previously thought impossible.

The Raven's eyes flitted down to the rope around her foot twice, the first time almost as an afterthought, the second with a look of mounting rage, and it occurred to Hurley just then that they had not really restrained her much at all. They tightened their grip on the lasso just as she went to stand and yanked so that she could not get her footing. She fell back onto her butt with an indignant grunt and tried again. They pulled again, becoming more aware all the while that they were just bringing her closer to them. 

That was when the sound returned to them like rocks tumbling over each other. Both they and the Raven turned just in time to see Barbra and Jerry come riding up, and for possibly the first time ever, Hurley was relieved to see them both. It was just seconds before each of them tossed a rope around her torso and pinned her arms to her sides. She squirmed against the bonds for a few moments and then went still, glaring between the three of them there. That was that. 

A fine thread of blood had begun to trickle out from beneath her hairline, barely skirting her eye, where she could not wipe it away. It ran all the way down to her neck. Hurley's doing. They were about to step forward when they felt a large hand press down on their shoulder.

"So you lost us a horse, it seems."

Hurley looked up in surprise, but Bane had a warm grin for them, the kind that let a person in on a joke. They smiled back, probably more broadly than they strictly needed to. "Still glad you brought me along?"

"Well, had you been a little worse at this job than I thought you'd be, you would've gone off and done something stupid and not gotten anywhere." He gave them a couple of firm pats. "But turns out, you're just as good as I thought you'd be. Better, considering you got the Raven on your first try."

"I wasn't expecting it either," they laughed.

He chuckled lightly, and then they watched him turn his attention to the captive in front of him. Barbra had her by the back of her collar and had already pulled her up to her knees. A bit of her hair was caught in his fist.

"She's younger than I thought," Hurley commented. 

He gave the thief an assessing look. "Not more than a year or two younger than you, I'd say. I don't see outlaws too much older than this, quite frankly. They tend to live fast and die faster."

"I guess so," they mumbled mostly to themself as they watched Bane walk over to her. The boys weren't easing up on the lassos, and already her breathing was shallower as her chest tried to expand against the rope.

He didn't tell them off for it, though. Instead he stepped close to her so that the tips of his boots nearly touched her knees. He cast her into shadow as he stood over her, making her lean back in order to match his gaze. Then, with a forefinger and thumb, he gripped the mask around her face and pulled it down in one motion. They saw all of her hard countenance now. A pale scar ran over the bridge of her nose, another down across her lips in a perfect vertical.

With the same hand that had felt warm and strong on Hurley's shoulder a moment ago, he suddenly grabbed her jaw. His fingers pressed into the skin of her cheek, his thumb dug into the bone beneath her ear. They released a minute gasp. They could see it from where they stood, how he kept squeezing as though to wring something out of her, which perhaps he did when her mouth was forced open a bit. 

"So that's what you look like," he said coolly. "You'll really get your picture in all the papers now, isn't that right?"

Her expression stayed hard and solid as stone. Her lower jaw was gritted and jutted. Hurley didn't know how she wasn't even trying to pull away. How she stood it rather than trying to whip her head out of his grasp. That was what they would have done, they thought.

"Bind her hands and arms both." He dropped his hand, finally. "And make sure those knots are damn tight. She's been known to try sneaking off."

This was the only time she fought, really. Jerry came up behind her, and she glanced backwards, gritted her teeth, got one of her feet underneath her and tried to stand before being shoved back to the ground. Bane was over there and assisting before it even occurred to Hurley that they might help their posse. A hand on her bent back, right at the vertebra where the neck met the spine. She kept struggling as her arms were crossed behind her, with each wrist bound against the opposite elbow. It was only when Barbra pulled back on the rope hard enough to make her wince that she stopped. That left her leaning over a little. Her chest and the muscles of her belly worked hard on every rasping inhale. Her breathing stayed heavy and open-mouthed when she was half-pulled and half-kicked to her feet and started walking behind the horses as they moved in the direction of their base camp.

Hurley walked too, though Bane offered more than once to let them ride on his horse while he walked awhile. On the way, they kept turning back to look. The Raven just went and went. She drove her gaze into the ground like a plough and hardly moved or lifted it, except to glare when she felt an extra tug on the ropes around her torso. Other than that, she looked almost listless. Concussed, maybe, they thought. But she wasn't uncoordinated or struggling to focus. She simply didn't react.

It wasn't until they got back to their base camp that she showed some resistance. Hurley saw as she finally picked her head up and watched while Barbra opened the padlocked back door to the wagon, with its couple of small, square, barred windows. She hesitated before the wide dark opening, tried to take a couple steps back even as she was pulled forward. But it didn't matter. Barbra yanked and Lil' Jerry shoved and Hurley saw her look backward over the boys' heads, at something far away, before the door closed and locked on her again.

They stared for a bit longer before shaking their head. "I can go untie her for you while she's in there, Sheriff--"

"No," he said even as they started stepping forward. "It'll be good for tiring her out a bit if she stays like that for awhile."

"But that's dangerous," they responded without waiting a beat.

"It's only for a few hours, Hurley. It won't hurt anything."

They tried to keep from gaping at him. "It'll definitely hurt. It probably hurts now."

There was a force and urgency in their voice that they heard too late. He half-turned his head towards them, just enough that they could see the widening of his eye and the raising of his brow. "Hurley, you caught an outlaw on your first go, and that's to be commended, but you're still new to all of this. I've been here plenty of times. Trust me when I say I know what to do here." He nodded towards said outlaw, now unseen behind the door. "You suppose we were too rough?"

"I..." They bit the inside of their cheek. Hurley was included in that "we." Only one of them among the group, after all, had made the Raven bleed. "I just think we shouldn't do anything unnecessary."

"And I agree," he said almost somberly. "I try not to, unlike some people. If another group of bounty hunters had gotten her, she likely would've been beaten by now. That's if they bothered trying to bring her back alive at all."

They shivered a little. The cold here came on fast in the evenings.

"I call them one-person juries, people that just go out to kill or punish. It's a sorry state of affairs. She's lucky." He said it as though the sentence were a conversation ender.

It wasn't, in their mind. They weren't convinced that this got a pass just because other posses were far worse, and they were about to tell him as much, but only got as far as saying, "But, Sheriff--" before he brought them to a halt again.

"Hurley," he said. The word was a quiet warning. "Let yourself learn first."

They stared at him even after he turned around to walk away. For a long time, they stood dumbly and watched his back as he strode back towards the fire pit.

Again, this was not disobedience, they told themself as they covertly unlocked the wagon door while the others ate dinner a ways off. Bane said he wanted to bring his prisoners back alive? Then they were going to make sure this one stayed alive, whether he liked it or not.

The late amber light struggled in through the tiny windows, getting caught up in the smoky dust that rose from the floor. It was just bright enough to see the way the Raven lifted her hanging head, letting the long black hair fall away from where it covered her cheek. Without turning their way, she let her gaze slice across them.

After far too long of a pause, they opened with, "Hello," since it seemed like as good an introduction as any.

Behind the airtight line of her mouth, they could tell, her teeth were gritted. They could almost hear the scrape of them.

"That looks uncomfortable," they continued, stepping forward, because the alternative was going backwards, which they never did. "I'll get those ropes off of you if you'll let me."

They kept coming towards her until they saw her pulling her leg back slowly, winding up for a kick. "Hey. Easy." They took another small step forward, still out of her strike range. Their voice did not rise above a murmur. "Easy. There's no catch here, I promise. I'm still going to have to chain your ankles, but I'll untie you so you can move around. You just have to let me, please."

When they kept walking forward, nothing in her changed, including the intensity of her glare. But she didn't seem primed to kick them anymore either, which was good enough for them. 

She tracked their every motion, twisting her neck around to look at them over her shoulder as they went to undo the knots at her wrists. When their fingers brushed hers, she flinched, curled her hands up into fists. But they didn't miss the long sigh and slumping of her shoulders when the bonds fell away, the way her eyes shut slowly.

They moved so that they were back in front of her and saw, without a moment to spare, the way she eyed the key to the cuffs that had just been locked around her legs. They pulled back the hand that held it just as she swiped at it, catching only the air. Well, that escape attempt had taken all of thirty seconds for her to concoct. The three-day journey back to Goldcliff would be exciting.

"Nice try," they commented. They dropped the key into their breast pocket and reached for their canteen. "Do you want water?"

She looked at it like it was the first she had ever seen. When they held it out a little further to her, though, she brought her gaze back to them and kept it there. It didn't move away even as she took the metal container from them and unscrewed the cap. They thought, finally, that they saw something else other than the bitterness in her, even if it wasn't gone. Her head was angled curiously, to eye them as though she were looking through a keyhole.

"I'm Hurley, by the way. I know you didn't ask, which was a bit rude, but I thought if you needed--"

"It's not going to work."

They stopped. In an instant, her lips had become stretched thin into a tight smile. It stayed unchanged on her face even as Hurley searched it for answers. She didn't open her mouth, but still she laughed a low, heavy laugh, dredged up like phlegm. 

"What's not going to wo--"

She held up a finger to halt them as she brought up their canteen to her mouth and tipped her entire head back. They lost count of how many swallows she took, but they did wonder whether she was remembering to breathe. Finally, she pulled it away with a loud, refreshed exhale and tossed it back into their lap, half as heavy. "You," she began, casually wiping her mouth, "are trying to make this easier on yourself. You think if you throw me a bone or two I'll be docile and not give you any trouble while you're dragging me off to prison. Well, go fuck yourself, little Red." She dragged out the last sentence like she had all day to say it. Her voice had a sing-song tilt like a head rocking from side to side, slathered in mock sweetness.

They stayed sitting on their butt in front of her. Well. In all fairness, they didn't really know what else they should have expected. They ran a hand through the short puff of almost-auburn curls on the top of their head, of which they were suddenly quite conscious. "Fine, I'll go fuck myself," they mumbled. There was no truth to what she said, but they doubted there was any way to convince her of that. "Can I at least have your name, since I gave you mine? Though it seems like you forgot it already."

"My name is whatever you think it is, Red."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"What have you heard me called? The Raven, I'm sure." She gave them a curl of her lips that was a smirk and a sneer and a snarl all at once. "What else?"

They matched her hard stare. "They call you Black Devil," they answered quietly.

She looked amused, but not surprised. 

"You seem pretty nonchalant about all this."

"What? Getting harassed by people like you? Yeah, you could say I'm used to it."

They had to almost chuckle at that. "Harassment seems like a stretch. What did you expect anyway? You think people will just ignore the murder of an innocent man and an unbroken streak of robberies stretching from one end of the territory clear to the other? That's not the kind of thing you get away with forever. If not us, some other posse would've--"

"What did you say?" 

For the second time, she brought them to a stop. While they had been speaking, the Raven had been staring at the spot of floor between her chained feet with slowly widening eyes. Her expression had gradually eroded into perplexion, her furrowed brow loosening into surprise. Now she turned to face Hurley directly. 

They found their voice again. "What do you mean?"

"About the murder."

Her bewilderment was genuine. Hurley could not see how it could have been otherwise, with the way that she blinked fast, as though trying to clear her vision of sleep in the morning. But she should have known, at least, that the murder conviction was a possibility. "I said we can't just ignore it." 

"Who..." The word came out cracked as her parched lips. She cleared her throat, then. She swallowed her spit and seemed to pull something back inside herself along with it, something that she had let spill out by accident. Her eyes didn't look quite so wild, even as she breathed more quickly. "So who do they say I killed?" 

She hadn't a clue.

"Bank teller. A Mr. Miles Abernathy, from the First Bank of Goldcliff. He was killed during the burglary. A whole bunch of witnesses spotted someone with your description running from the place." They weren't sure if the last sentence was to inform the Raven or to give themself a reminder. "You don't remem--you didn't know?"

"Didn't hear that, no." She had been nodding along as they spoke, as though she were still learning how to nod.

"So you didn't do it?"

She acted as if she hadn't heard.

"Well..." They grasped at anything. "Well, if you didn't do it, that'll come out in the trial."

That brought her back, seemingly, to herself. Her eyes went cold and narrow again, squinting at more than seeing what was before her. "Get out," she muttered, not looking their way.


	2. i know dark clouds will hover o'er me

They woke up that night to a hand shaking their shoulder. 

They sat straight up and tried to pick out shapes around them. The sky was still dark as fertile soil, and it bore plentiful stars. 

In front of them was Bane, crouched on the ground with a lantern only bright enough to light both of their faces. Glancing over, Hurley saw the two black lumps on the ground that were the still-sleeping forms of Barbra and Jerry. 

Bane looked at them pointedly for awhile, then stood. Nothing further was needed for Hurley to know that he wanted them to follow. 

He led them to where Hurley had been hoping, maybe against hope, he wouldn't. He came to a stop a few meters in front of the door to the wagon. They looked at the ground. 

"Just because you went against my orders once and had it work out," he said quietly, "doesn't mean I expect you to make a habit of it."

They bit the inside of their cheek. It was the only way of holding their tongue at the moment. 

"You suppose we were too rough, then? That's why you insisted on undoing the ropes?"

They sighed. "Sir, I just don't believe in kicking people when they're already down. She's not a threat now."

"That doesn't surprise me." He paused, then gestured toward the wagon a little with the hand holding the lantern, causing it to swing on its creaky metal handle. "Let me tell you something about that one. And it's not one of those bullshit tall tales about the Raven that people like to pass around. This is true."

They looked away from the locked door and back to him. 

"She's been caught only once before, as far as anyone can confirm. Another posse from another town did what we're doing now, only they didn't do it nearly as well as they should have. Most of the accounts say that they just bound her wrists, left her tied to some tree or post near their camp, and then went to sleep. Well, you can imagine what happened. Someone like that, unguarded, you can bet she got away in the night." He let out a sigh through his nose. "That was nearly five years ago. Compared to now, the Raven had only had a handful of robberies under her belt, smaller ones. And it was well before she killed anyone."

"Sheriff..." they said, but they took too long thinking of where to begin, so he went on.

"I'm saying this because I like you, Hurley. I think you're like me. Both of us feel the need to protect the innocent as much as we need to protect ourselves, and you'll do what you have to do to protect. And when you get more experienced and maybe become my deputy--" They looked back at him with a jolt at that. "--since I get the feeling that would suit you, you can start making more judgment calls yourself. But keep this in mind when you do. Had that first posse handled her capture properly, Abernathy would still be here today, not to mention everyone else she's thought to have killed in other towns, and I think about that. And do you know what else? Maybe if she'd gone to prison at that time five years ago, she would've eventually gotten out and lived the rest of her life, instead of facing the gallows. I think about that with these people, too."

Their mouth felt dry as they took in the night air through it. They had been ready to defend their decision before, but Bane was maybe the one person who knew how to shut them up.

He sighed again. "Anyway, that's it. I don't mean to berate you. Listen. Tomorrow morning, I'm going out to scout for signs of other bandits reported to be in the area. I'm leaving you to stay behind and keep guard." He spoke emphatically as he brought out his rope. "The Raven is to stay tied before then. I'll undo the ropes tomorrow, but not until she's worn out enough. I don't want you or anyone else here put at a disadvantage around her."

Hurley mulled over whether to push back. Maybe they should've been honored to have such a responsibility, but on the other hand, it seemed pointed and deliberate that he would choose not to take them along when they'd been the one to catch the Raven. But they thought better of it anyway. "I won't be, sir."

"Good." He then went over to the wagon and took the lock off the door. Then, with the hand that was not holding the rope, he pulled out his gun. He looked back at Hurley, and while they did not follow him this time, they only met his eyes for a few seconds before glancing away.

Just because they didn't see didn't mean they couldn't imagine. They heard a thud, then a louder one followed by a grunt. Bane said something that they couldn't make out. Then, quickly, he was outside again. 

"I think we ought to get some sleep," he said before walking past them. They paused before heading back with him toward the fire.

* * *

Just after first light, as promised, Bane left with the other men. As Hurley had realized while lying awake last night, he was also leaving them with an opportunity.

They opened up the wagon almost as soon as the others were out of sight. "Me again!"

"Outstanding," muttered the Raven, glancing heavenward as though locked in place half-way through an eye-roll. To Hurley's relief, but not to their surprise, Bane had made good. She was back to only having the chains around her ankles.

They knelt in front of her and reached out. "Hands, please."

"You think I'm going to just let you cuff me some more?"

"I'm going to shackle your wrists, but then I'll undo the ones on your feet so you can walk around better," they answered patiently. "It's not good for you to have your ankles shackled too long. It'll start to get painful."

"Take off the ones around my feet first, then."

"I'm not stupid, uh, Devil, was it?"

"Then I'm not letting you do shit to me."

Hurley thought, then shrugged. "I can't make you do anything. All I know is it's not good for you to be chained the way you are for too long, and I thought you'd want to change that sooner rather than later. So you don’t get hurt.”

She didn't respond, which, they hoped against hope, meant she could be thinking it over. Without warning, she thrust out her hands toward them. She had what could nearly be described as a pout on her face, like Hurley used to see on their younger siblings, and it was difficult not to snort out a laugh at it. Those were simple and fun memories, so Hurley tried to enjoy them without thinking too hard about them.

After they had finished fastening and unfastening chains, they turned to her and waited for her to make eye contact. When, after what must have been half a minute, she finally did, they nodded their head in the direction of the open wagon door and then stood. Bane's warning rang through their head, and they quickly countered it by reasoning, again, that Bane had never actually told them not to let the Raven out of the wagon. It wasn't as though Hurley were leaving her unguarded, as those others had. When Bane came back, he would see how well they had the situation under control, in their own way.

They turned when they reached the threshold to find that she was still sitting on the floor, examining them with one cocked eyebrow. "Don't you want to go outside? You can if you want." She only kept looking at them, so they went on. "I think it'd be a good idea for you to walk around more, for one. So you're not just sitting and getting stiff."

There was another beat. Then, gradually, she started to stand. Just by looking at her, they'd been able to tell right away that she hadn't slept well, but now they saw the full extent of the toll the night had taken on her. Her movements were slow, and she tried not to move her arms more than she had to. She paused and winced more than once when she moved the wrong way. Bane was right. Hurley was definitely at more of an advantage since she had been left tied overnight.

"Can I ask you something?" They didn't wait for a response before going on, "Why didn't you try to shoot me when I caught you? You could've. I saw the gun they took off you."

They waited some time for an answer. For awhile, it seemed that she would not give it at all. Then: "I wasn't quick enough. What else would you expect?"

But it wasn't just a matter of not being quick on the draw. She hadn't even thought to reach for it while her hands were free. They considered it as a new, welcome wind blew. The air had been largely still and hot for the many days that they had been in the desert, and they liked how the gusts came on with the sounds of ocean waves in their ears. They realized that they missed rain. 

When they looked back at her, she was looking out at the horizon with her face to the wind. "Here's another question, then."

"Is this an interrogation?" she quipped without turning their way.

"It's curiosity. I was wondering...I heard you got caught once and got away."

"I did." The Raven's smile was sudden, startling, and bitter.

"How?"

"What do you think, Red?"

"I think I should've known by now I wouldn't be getting a straight answer."

"Well, it's not that it's a story I don't like telling," she said. "Just not to you. Not keen on letting you know how I got away."

The wind sent the loose sand skittering across the ground like sideways rain. As they watched it, Hurley said, "That's not what I meant. I mean, you just ran off into the desert alone and survived?"

"Sure." She shrugged. "I don't have a problem out here. That's just other people."

"Alright, but--" They stopped as they saw a near-empty canteen start to roll away and jogged to retrieve it. It was nearly lifted off the ground before they caught up to it. 

The Raven watched them while, around her, loose sheets used for bedding began to flap. Concern was on her face now, they saw. 

After a while, her focus went back to Hurley. "Storm's coming."

They looked at the vast, featureless sky and then back to her. 

She just rolled her eyes. "Don't be stupid. Grab some wet bandanas so we can put them over our faces," she said before she went back into the wagon, shutting the door behind her.

They had to pause to ponder what that meant. Slowly, they looked back at the sky, and initially, there was nothing. But as they squinted against the brightness they saw, where the cornflower sky met the near-orange earth, there was a thick and muddy smudge. It stretched almost as far as they could see to the left and right. A thin line on the horizon, until, too soon, it wasn’t, and it grew and bloomed before their eyes into clouds, the towering clouds of a storm, except that these were billows of dust. Too big to go around, too quick to outrun. Even if they had had any option other than staying put at the camp. 

They watched it until they couldn't anymore. They turned toward the wagon as the wind buffeted hard. After a few steps, they stopped, then grabbed a few pieces of cloth and soaked them with water from the canteens. It wasn't until they came back into the small space that they remembered that the wagon didn’t lock from the inside. 

They couldn’t even cough. That’s what they found when the dust storm finally came, after the wind shook down the wood of the wagon and made it creak, after the sun no longer shone. They couldn’t cough, no matter how desperately they wanted to, because immediately after a coughing fit, they would automatically gasp and inhale, and what they would inhale was the air that was now more dust than air. They had hoped that the lack of openings in the wagon would prevent the worst of it, but even so, the fine, fine dust came in through the single tiny window and through the gaps between the slats and through the crack in the door. They felt that every time they breathed, their lungs were filling and turning to a pair of hourglasses. All of this came to them in darkness. They didn’t open their eyes once as the storm enveloped them, though they felt the dust collecting along their squeezed eyelids. It stuck to the corners of their eyes where the tears gathered as they struggled not to let out a cough.

The chill, though, was what surprised them. As soon as the light was blocked out, the heat, once stifling inside the enclosed space, rapidly drained away. In its place came a cold that soaked into their bones. They had always known that the desert could be as cold as it was hot, but it was always the cold that came as a shock to their bones. 

It was only when, after gods-know-how-long, the wind stopped that they looked. The haze of unsettled particles in the air gave the world a sepia tone. But they made out the small piles of dust along the edges of the floor. 

The Raven was still beside them. As they turned to look at her, they found her with her eyes closed and her head slumped against her shoulder. She breathed, faintly. 

It took them several tries before they could get out a sound, with the way their throat had become coated in a layer of dirt. “Hey,” they finally managed to croak as they moved in front of her, “are you--?”

In an instant, a pair of hands slammed against their sternum and knocked them back. They caught themself on their elbows before their back could slam into the ground, but by that time, the Raven had gotten to her feet, suddenly not dazed in the slightest. Before they could do anything, she reached into their pocket and pulled out the key to the cuffs. 

Hurley rolled over to look at her upright. She had started to move away, fumbling with the key as she struggled to unlock the shackles despite the small amount of slack the chain afforded her. That bought the time they needed. They grabbed her and dragged her to the ground with one pull. She growled, but before she could push back, they shoved her chest back to the ground with one hand and then pinned her hands above her head with the other. She flexed against them for a moment before going still and wild-eyed, with a heaving chest. 

They stared down at her. “You know, you’re not as strong as you look,” they said hoarsely, still panting.

She just huffed.

Once they got the key back, they got up to push the door open, slowly. They tried not to gasp when they saw. Beyond the camp, the nearby desert looked nearly unchanged--the sand was still just sand. But where the sandstorm had come up against the features of the camp, it had done damage to them. Dust and grit piled like snow. They thought about all it must have gotten into, the food and the tools. Where they saw things that had been there before missing, they wondered whether the objects had been buried or blown away.

It took a moment for them to breath again, but they did. It still hurt a little to do so. 

They stepped into the reformed outside in order to do what they always did, which was to deal with what was in front of them--with the fire pit full of dust, with the water full of dust, with the dust that had formed drifts against the wagon and buried the wheels hopelessly. "It's okay," they said, maybe to the Raven behind them and maybe just to themself. "We're okay."

When the posse was not back by midday, Hurley began to wonder. 

When the hottest part of the day arrived, when the whole party would normally stop and rest, they thought that perhaps the others were doing that now, wherever they were.

When the sun began to sink, they waited for far too long to build a fire. They weren’t especially good at doing that, anyway--with how long it took them most of the time, they might as well wait around for the others to return rather than struggling themself. Anyway, Bane normally built the fires, letting one strike of flint against flint ignite the tinder. They had even seen him do it with sticks, faster than anyone else. When the color had left the sky, they finally went at it, and the effort they exerted was almost enough to get them to stop shivering as the evening chill overtook them. 

It wasn’t until quite late in the evening, when the wail of the coyotes had been ongoing for hours and they had nothing to do but sit and listen to it, that they could no longer prevent themselves from considering it. The storm had been moving in the same direction that the posse had been traveling, far faster than they had been traveling. This part of the desert was flat, far more open and barren than the areas full of sheltered canyons or stone formations. Was there anything out there to act as a shield from the wind? Was there anything there, even, that stood taller than Bane? How much worse would it have been without the wagon as shelter?

They struggled, more and more, to keep their feet on the ground. To keep from feeling that they were floating detached from the rest of the world in the night. Like a boat whose moorings had silently come loose and had begun to drift out to sea unnoticed in the dark. They tried not to believe that they were alone. It didn’t work. They were.

They stared and stared out to the east. There was no way that they could have slept, even if they had felt like it. Eyes were on them, always. Even when the Raven seemed to sleep--which she didn’t much--they didn’t allow themself to be convinced. They had learned their lesson. They knew they were being scrutinized. Of course she would try anything if they so much as managed to doze, and while they had dropped the key into their boot so that she didn’t have a prayer of sneaking off with it without their noticing, her quickness still posed too much of a risk. They kept on looking as yellow leaked into the sky with the approach of morning. Everything up to their eyeballs ached. They had not even blinked enough overnight.

They almost surprised themself when, as the sun began to shine at full strength, they uttered quietly, "They're not coming back."

"Oh, your posse?" came the response from behind them, from the woman lying on her back and lackadaisically tossing a coin into the air, though they had been speaking mostly to themself. "Yeah, I doubt it. Not if they got caught out in that shit."

They physically flinched. Having someone else voice it was somehow even worse. But they had to refocus. Not think about what had happened and not think about the likelihood of Bane’s return in the future. There was only what was in front of them. They took a breath and turned to her, saying, "Since we might be out here together for a bit, I figured I'd ask again. What's your name?"

With a degree of petulance that would have been impressive if it weren't infuriating, she replied, "The Raven."

"Right. What's your actual name that you use when you're not hiding behind a criminal alias?"

"Devil."

"Okay, listen up. I know you're giving me a hard time because you're upset and need to take it out."

"Oh, please don't misunderstand me. I'm giving you a hard time because it's funny." She rolled over onto her belly. "And what do you mean we're gonna be out here for awhile?”

“I mean I’m getting you back to Goldcliff.”

She hissed a laugh. “Right. Of course. By yourself, with your broken, horseless wagon.”

“I didn’t say I’d try to do it by myself.” They came closer to where she sat, next to one of the half-buried wagon wheels. “All I need to do is keep us alive until someone passes by who can go and get help.”

Her expression changed back to ire now. “You’re out of your fucking mind! There isn’t nearly enough traffic this far out here to just wait around for some rescue. We’ll die sitting around here first.”

“No, we won’t,” they said simply. They had made a promise to Bane. They committed, then and there. 

She only glowered at them. Then, quick as anything, she went to knock them off their feet, but they were expecting it this time, and they weren’t slow either. They pushed her back down and, before she could recover, clapped a chain around her foot. They attached it to the unmoving wheel and then backed away from her. 

They shouldn’t have looked back. They wouldn’t have, had they not heard the chains jingling. She pulled back on them for a bit, as though to test the strength of them, and then stopped. Something shifted. She quit resisting, suddenly. The fight fled her in a way that was more obvious to them than when she had first been caught two days ago. (Had it really only been two days?) She stared at the line of metal links that swung lightly between her ankle and the wagon. Then, she hunched her shoulders and pressed her mouth and nose into the collar of her duster. Her thick hair kept most of her face concealed.

It was just for now, they reminded themself. Just until they knew what they were doing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every time you leave me a comment or kudos, imagine me tipping my little cowboy hat at my phone notification and saying "Much obliged."


	3. no sickness, toil, nor danger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: blood

On the fourth morning alone, Hurley got up shortly before sunrise. For hours before that, they'd stared up at the sky and waited for it to get just light enough so that they could see what they were doing while they made breakfast. They hadn't slept so much as dipped their head beneath the level of consciousness a few times, for maybe half an hour each. That was between shivering hard in the night air and staying alert to the desert's many sounds. It didn't matter. They'd done their work just fine on as little or less sleep the past several days.

They rose from the couple of cotton blankets they'd lain on the ground as a makeshift mattress, in a poor attempt to keep the rocky earth from poking into their back. They roused the sputtering fire into a healthy blaze, started to cook four of the remaining strips of bacon, salivated over the smell. It was hard not to pull them from the skillet before they'd finished cooking through.

The Raven was a still, dark shape hunched against the outside of the wagon. She wasn't sleeping either. Hurley knew that by now. They felt themself unconsciously bracing as they brought half the bacon to her on a semi-clean plate. 

"Morning," Hurley said. Today, nothing moved but her eyes as she watched them set the food down in front of her. They made a note not to back off too quickly.

She didn't try anything this time, and so they let out a breath after they finally turned away from her. About half the time they came within an arm's length of her, she tried to trip them or pull them to the ground. In the beginning, she’d just tried to reach into their pockets or socks or wherever she thought they’d stashed the keys--one reason why they didn't keep the keys on their person much anymore. That was easy enough to swat off. It was harder when she tried to kick or knock them down.

Hurley never really got hurt. Hurting them wasn’t her focus, though whether she would mind if it happened was another question. Regardless, they could handle it. Did handle it.

At least it was activity. In between those instants punctuated by her anger sat hours of sagging, stagnant heat during the day. 

They sat and thought for awhile about looking at their supply stocks, and then they didn't. There was a finality and an admission inherent in portioning out their remaining resources amongst just two people. Instead, when the Raven was done eating, they carefully switched out her chains again, so that her hands were cuffed rather than her feet. They sat by the fire and shuffled the black wood around for a few minutes, then looked toward the horizon as the sun started to come up. Had they not turned to look then, it might have been too late for them to see it.

At first, they wondered if it was an illusion, but this early, the ground wasn't hot enough to give rise to mirages. That meant that the distant, tiny shapes crawling along the horizon like black ants could only be horses and riders. A line of four, maybe five real, honest-to-gods other creatures out here in what seemed like a land of the dead.

"Hey." They breathed the word first in a croaky, disbelieving voice, and then, more loudly and far more deliberately, they shouted, "Hey!"

The newly familiar sound of shuffling chains came to them. From behind them, they heard the Raven start, "What are you--"

Instinctively, they ran several paces toward the group in the distance, then skidded to a stop on the gritty ground and doubled back. They ran into the wagon and shuffled around for the big, torn white sheet in there. "Someone's out there," they said breathlessly. "I need to get their attention." They hurried back toward the group, unfurling the sheet as they ran so they could wave it like a flag. It wasn't their posse--they could tell that from the number and the heights of some of the people--but it was people who probably had with them supplies and a way back. 

A blow struck their back. It wasn't hard enough to hurt much, but the force and the surprise of it sent them crashing to the ground on their stomach. It took a half-second for the breath to come back into their lungs. When they turned to look over their shoulder, the Raven was kneeling over them.

Her eyes glinted, hard and mean as gems. "Don't."

Hurley scoffed in the back of their throat and scrambled to stand, just to get pulled down again. But before the Raven could drag them backward, they flipped onto their back so they could push her off. "Get off me!" they shouted as she hit the ground. "I'm getting their help!"

She gave something like a growl and went for them again, but this time Hurley was ready. They caught her by the wrists as she tried to tackle them head-on, but the impact still sent them back. Where they expected the impact of the hard earth against their spine, they instead felt the white-hot shock of a burning against their back. They gasped and, without thinking, forced the Raven to flip over so that she was on her back instead. The hot coals remaining in the blackened fire pit were biting into her now. As she yelped, her grip on them loosened.

Hurley got to their knees and then to their feet. They could see the black specks in the distance passing by. They weren't about to allow it.

They ran a step or two forward before they felt a hand around their ankle. As they went down, they saw stones coming up to meet them.

Before they opened their eyes, Hurley could feel the pain pulsing right in between them. They felt the blood drumming against their skull as they slowly opened their eyes to the too-bright sun.

The blur faded from their vision slowly. When it did, they saw the dark shape of the Raven above them. Their thoughts felt like a thick slurry inside them, but it occurred to them slowly that, all of a sudden, she didn't look ready for a fight. She just looked down at them with big, staring eyes. When they started to slowly sit up, they thought they saw her move back a bit.

They wondered how long she'd been watching them. They wondered if she'd thought about slicing their throat while they were helpless.

Hurley winced as they fully sat up, feeling the sting of the burn wounds on their back on top of the pounding in their head. "How long was I..." 

And then they remembered. Like a person sobering up with a splash of water, they scrambled onto their hands and knees and faced the horizon. It was flat and blank as the face of a dead man. 

As if of its own accord, their body got off the ground and ran several paces. They didn't know where they were going. It was just vaguely in the direction that the disappeared travelers had been traveling. They couldn't have been passed out that long. They couldn't have. They stumbled on the sand as they went. Their limbs felt leaden.

"They're gone," she said at last, quietly. "Long gone."

They kept running for several more steps before slowing and then stopping. The desert looked the same for miles and miles around. There was no longer anything to move towards, nothing that could guide them. "Dammit." They spat out the word with all the force they could, shot out precious tiny drops of saliva into the sand. It did nothing to help the bitter taste in their mouth. "God dammit."

They should've been on their way out of here by now. They had the lifeline between their hands and let it slip out. They should've had it.

"Why the hell would you do that?" They spun on her in time to see her flinch back, for sure this time. At another point in time, in another place, they might not have felt the sense of animal satisfaction seeing her cowed, but they did now. There was a hot throbbing in their head still. The harsh light was becoming too much. "Don't you want to get out of here too? Isn't anything at all better than rotting out here in this hell?"

Her eyes were still cast off to the side as she refused to face them, but a new, grim resolve took over her expression. Her lips tightened, and she seemed not to look at anything in particular. "No," she whispered.

Hurley groaned and turned away. They rubbed at their aching eyes. Even through their fingers the sun was too bright.

"Besides," said the Raven, making them look again. Her voice was still hushed, but the grimace on her face had twisted up into a joyless grin. "Besides, I've seen the way you are out here. If the desert is gonna kill one of us first, it won't be me."

They fixed their glare on her. "If that's what you think, why didn't you just get it over with when I was passed out, Raven? You had plenty of time."

"'Cause I don't know where you hid the goddamn keys," she answered in a quick, low growl.

They huffed and stomped away to squint out into the distance again. It felt like maybe it was just a matter of watching and waiting long enough, like if they just looked hard enough they would...what, win? Like the universe had given them one last hurdle before the end of all this, and they just had to make one last miraculous leap to get over it. It was almost impossible to process that the people were gone. 

In time, they turned around and looked back at the Raven, who was dusting herself off. As she started to lean over, her expression tightened into a wince, and she quickly straightened again. Their eyes snapped to the red opening in her skin the size of a half-dollar. It sent blood down her spine in a thin, neat line to stain the hem of her trousers. They thought about it, then huffed, "That one on your back is going to get infected overnight if you're not careful." They started to position themself behind her. "Come here, let me--"

The hit landed just under their nose. Pain rang through the hollows of their sinuses, reverberated through their teeth, which felt like they had been bent askew inside their gums. For an instant, as they reeled backward, they felt sure that a couple of teeth must have been knocked out, the blow was so sharp. When the familiar taste of iron hit their tongue, they knew that the inside of their mouth must have been struck open. It took a moment before they could open their eyes, instinctively squeezed shut, and pull their hand away from their mouth to find the bright blood dripping down their finger. Split lip for sure. 

They didn't move, or look up. It wasn't the pain but the shock that got to them. They'd dealt with this and worse a number of times before, but all those times they had seen the punches coming at them, through the cigar smoke and the drunken spectators' jeers, during tavern brawls. Fair fights. The hits only made them want to come back swinging harder, then. Now they didn't know what they felt--certainly not the heat of their blood under their skin as they did in those moments before--and they didn't know what to do, after days of not knowing what to do, as they sat flat on their ass in the dust and silence. They had let themself get sucker-punched. It had been awhile since the last time that had happened.

Finally, incredulous, they slowly looked away from their hand and at the person who had managed it. 

But whatever expression they had expected to see on her face--hatred, triumph--was not to be found. The Raven just gave them a wide-eyed stare, looking exactly as rattled as they felt. Her mouth was open, but she barely seemed to take air in or out, her chest hardly moving. Like the show of force had taken her by surprise, too. It made sense. Nothing she had done to them in the past few days had been anywhere near this hard. Nothing had drawn blood.

If there was any instinct in them that would make them want to retaliate, any anger, it wilted under the heavy heat as they watched her. After a few moments, she took in a breath that made her puff out like an adder and set her face into an expression too hardened and firm to be knocked off by a punch. But that was only after they saw her shiver under the sun, just briefly. That was only after they watched her eyes flicker, nervously, again and again. They realized, after few seconds, that she was looking towards the gun at their hip, towards the fire poker near their side. Things within Hurley's uncuffed reach. 

They glanced at the iron around her wrists and thought,  _ Fair fights. _

"Okay," they exhaled. They weren't sure what, if anything, was okay about this. All they could think to do was reach, slowly--without any movements that could be considered sudden--until their palm landed on the cloth that they had been using to wipe the blood from themself. Their body leaned back a little as they held it out towards the Raven, with the relatively clean and sand-free side out. 

She blinked. Looked at the cloth, at them, the cloth again. Blinked some more. That was when they turned away, arm still outstretched. It wouldn't help, they thought, to stare her down at a time like this. A moment or two later, they felt the fabric leave their hand, and they got up, walked a little ways off, and sat back down again. 

A big bolus sat heavy in their middle, squeezed between their lungs and their stomach. They wanted to dislodge it somehow, vomit it up or cry it out of themself so they would not have to sit with it, but they could not even know what it was they felt, and they could not muster the energy to expel it. Anyway, they weren't sure they could afford the dehydration. The alternative would have been to remove themself from it for a bit, move their body until they found a distracting change of scenery. Here, though, there was nowhere to go. It was amazing, they mused, how a stretch of open space could feel so very confining. To know that beyond every horizon was more of the same parched earth nearly nauseated them. The uninterrupted, unclouded sky pressed in on them and seemed to sting them with its blue.

Frustration sludged inside of them until, a few minutes later, the crunch of footsteps interrupted the monotony. A pair of black boots entered the edge of their vision. When they glanced a little further to the side, they saw the cloth lain back down next to them. Folded. 

As they lifted their gaze a little more, the Raven promptly swung her head in the other direction, meaning that they hadn't only imagined her looking at them, cautiously. She sat cross-legged on the ground beside them, cuffed hands on her ankles. 

This seemed like an improvement. They might have left it at that. 

Hurley never left anything at that. "You know," they heaved after gods-know-how-long, "I know you only have my word to go on, and that probably doesn't mean much to you. But I'm really not going to hurt you."

She sent them an expression that looked like it was supposed to be a glare, but that had been dulled too much. Her face loosened a moment later, and she seemed to stare at the ground. They'd had a feeling that wouldn't do anything. They were just hoping that it might help with the guilt. Not that they had much reason to feel guilt--they had done nothing wrong. Certainly, it hadn't been intentional. It was just hard not to feel bad about scaring someone that badly.

Then, suddenly, they heard shuffling and saw her turn so that her back faced them. Her shirt was now lifted to expose the wound there, right in the middle, where it was difficult to reach.

While they were still questioning their next move, if any, she snapped, "You said you had a salve or some shit? Go on, get it over with."

They shook their head a little, maybe due to the whiplash they got from this sudden turn of events. "Alright, alright. 'Please' goes a long way, you know," they mumbled, somewhat absently. They felt unnerved. The Raven was looking at them over her shoulder, brow furrowed, barely blinking. 

She absolutely hated it. As they rubbed the cream into the wound, they felt the muscles of her back tense and keep tensing, knots beneath their fingers. Her breath quickened. The fact that it was on her own terms this time hardly seemed to help. They wondered how aware she was of the way her nerves came through. Her expression, at least, remained unchanging--she never took her eyes off them. "I'm almost done," they said quietly.

"Okay."

They brought their hand away and saw her shoulders immediately sag, when they had been up around her ears before. They moved away, then. 

It took awhile, and a couple of false starts when the Raven opened her mouth only to close it without speaking, before Hurley heard, "Thanks."

"Yup."

They said nothing else. Like snow drifting down through the still desert air, something miraculous seemed to come and settle, silent, between the two of them. It wasn't trust. Not by a long shot. But something.

* * *

Nothing changed about the nights. Beyond the radius of the firelight, the darkness seemed thick and absolute enough to be tangible, like they would drown in it if they breathed it in. The coyotes still went at it. 

The problem with the night was how acutely aware they became of the absences. They were alone during the day of course, too, effectively alone. But at night they would rest their head and get halfway to sleep before the cold snapped them back, because they weren't stoking the fire, because they were the one that had to stoke the fire, because there was no one there to relieve them from watch, because there was no one there with them at all and no more group leader that had probably been surviving stints in places like these for longer than they had been alive, because all of them were maybe dead and certainly gone. They thought of how Bane had trusted them to know what to do and how they had trusted themself with that too, and that all of this, somehow, was the disapproving universe knowing how cocky they had been to think they could ever.

Or maybe that was the lack of sleep instilling paranoia.

Howling, in fact, was not an especially apt description of what coyotes did. They screamed. Whooped and yelled like madmen at irregular intervals. Hurley wondered how far sound traveled across the flat dry stretch, how effectively such shrill sounds could pierce the thick darkness. They wondered if the lithe creatures were as close as they sounded.

At night they knew, for certain, that there was no one at their back, at least no one that was on their side. 

The tarball in the center of their ribcage had not left since earlier that day. It glommed onto other things to enlarge itself, make the squeeze inside them feel even more pronounced than it was. It tangled up their nerves. They were not sure if their senses had become sharper or merely confused. All they knew was that the shrieks sounded right in their ears now. 

They sucked in air through their barely open mouth. Damn it. This couldn't go on all night. Fear would paralyze them if they let it, and they wouldn't let it. They needed to take action. Any action would do at this point, probably, so long as they felt like they were doing fucking something other than just sitting in the dark. 

They stood, planted their feet, and tried to center themself. Tried to tap the same well of strength and sureness that they had always managed to find before at difficult times. Then, with their eyes closed, they took in a deep, steadying breath, just to feel the expansion in their chest and ground themself in the sensation. And then they used that deep and steadying breath to scream into darkness at the top of their lungs,  _ "I'll see you all in hell!" _

Several feet away from them, there was a sudden movement as the Raven quite ungracefully jumped inside her blankets. She briefly flailed like a startled cat before she froze sitting up, eyes silver dollar-sized as they flashed in the fire.

They huffed. "Sorry, I hope I didn't wake you."

"In what fucking world would that not have woken me?" In spite of everything, they almost had to chuckle at how frazzled she looked.

"Did you manage to sleep?" they asked instead.

"Well, not really. Not much." She looked past them into the dark. "That's, uh, that's one way to scare off the coyotes, I guess."

"Yeah. I think it worked." Indeed, the coyotes had stopped howling for just a second. Or maybe just a fraction of a second. Or maybe not at all, but they still liked to imagine that there was a pause there when those things had heard them howl back.

"Yeah, well, whatever helps you, I guess."

"Do you want me to try again?" Before she could answer, they practically pulled a throat muscle shrieking,  _ "I'll belly shoot every last one of you fuckers!" _

That time, from behind them, they heard either a laugh or a sneeze--it was impossible to say which. When they turned to the side, they saw the Raven with her head turned away and down, her hair curtaining either side of her face. Her chin was on her chest, as though she were burying something back inside herself. 

_ "You sons of bitches! Eat my ass!" _ They heard the new levity in their own voice as they spoke through a growing grin. Screaming like an idiot helped, as it turned out. 

"They're gonna think you're joining in with them if you keep that up," the Raven commented. Her voice had changed. There wasn't the usual sourness in it, or if there was, it had been added in only with effort. A tired sigh softened it.

"Well, let them. I think I'm acting mad enough to be one of them right now." Hurley finally went back to sit next to her, curling up with their lips pressed against their knees, even as the howls went on. "I think they've got me spooked, if I'm being completely honest."

The orange light of the fire sparked off her hair as she spun to look toward them. Her eyebrows stayed raised for a moment. Then, after a moment, she began ever so casually, "Well, coyotes only attack if they think their chances of winning are good. They might take on one person, but if maybe you've got two people--that is, two who are at liberty to fight them off--then they think their chances--"

"Save it, please. I'm not stupid and I'm not about to let you go." She huffed. They huffed. Then they mumbled, "I think I just wanted to say it." 

"I think you like the sound of your own voice."

"Oh, I do." They turned to her, but she did not meet their gaze. Instead, she eyed the silver flask that rested on the ground near their boot. Maybe it was only the lack of sleep addling their mind, but they couldn't think of what the harm could possibly be. If anything, it'd be harder for her to run away drunk. Fuck it. None of this had a rulebook anyway, and if it did, they hadn't ever bothered to read it. There was a sandpapery scrape beneath their heel as they nudged the thing nearer to her and glanced at her, with a very "nobody's-looking" look. She hesitated, and then, with a thief's swiftness and silence, swept it up off the ground. "That being said, if you're thinking of trying to sleep soon, I'll shut up."

"Didn't have much luck before you started screaming bloody murder, so I don't think it'll make a difference."

They shook their head. "It's weird. I don't get scared usually. I mean, one time a guy three times my size pulled a knife on me in a fist fight and dug it into my shoulder. He was aiming for the clavicle. I didn't miss a beat. I just kept swinging with the other fist. I didn't even have a moment to feel scared."

"Gods almighty. Did you win?"

"Yeah, pretty handily, if I do say so myself. That's not so surprising, though. Once they start cheating like that, you know they're desperate. I left him napping on the bar stool. He needed a time-out."

She snickered. This time, it was a laugh for sure, one that was deep and husky and from the chest. That was new. "And did he deserve it?"

"Oh, I think so. I saw him ready to skip on the bill in there, and that barkeep was the honest type. I wasn't about to let them get screwed over. He didn't like me saying so in front of everyone, though, as you might imagine." 

"Huh."

They paused and rolled a stone around beneath their index finger. It was nearly sharp enough to hurt, but not quite. "There were a few fights like that. I got the sheriff called on me eventually but, well, you can probably tell he doesn't hold it against me too much. He said he admired my guts and the way I wanted to set things right, but I'd never do it without some direction. He said what I did was brave. I don't know why I'm scared by a couple of dogs now." Any pride that had built up in their chest while recounting that story left when their lungs deflated, got exuded with their breath. The tarball returned with a vengeance, this time lodging halfway up their throat, choking them. "I suppose I'm being a coward, huh?"

They sniffed in a way that they hoped to pass off as a result of the night's chill. They didn't. At the sound, she stiffened and went whale-eyed. Then, after a beat, she ventured, "Are you...?"

Hurley was a crier. They had always acknowledged that about themself, and they had never been particularly ashamed of it. Their mother had used to tell them that a little sadness got squeezed out of them with every tear. Maybe that was why it came so easily to them now. What made them want to bury their puffy face in the sand was the fact that, right now, they were sitting in front of someone taking a glass to them in search of any weakness or opening, and that, at this moment, they were riddled with holes. "Sorry," they croaked. 

"Gods' sake, don't...uh..." This, bizarrely enough, was as nervous as they had heard her sound in three days. Neither while she was locked inside the cart nor in the aftermath of the dust storm had she sounded so quivery. Apparently, seeing someone cry was the thing that made her squirm. They would have laughed, were they not convinced that a loud sob would immediately follow it.

She did not speak again. Hurley focused on swallowing despite the painful scrape in their throat.

Then, out of the dark, the Raven blurted, "You know about the Burnham train robbery?"

Everything, including the tears, paused in place. "Umm..." Their weary mind struggled to decipher that. "You mean...the one you committed?"

"Yeah. The story about it. It's funny. I don't know. Will you stop crying if I tell you?" She wouldn't make eye-contact with them.

"Possibly?" They shifted to face her.

“Alright. Well, you should know that that particular train is made for long-distance travel. Meaning it’s for assholes wanting to get from the big cities to the coast, and who want to cross the desert without getting a grain of sand in their crusty asses. Refused to travel in anything that wasn’t coated in three layers of red velvet. Got suitcases stuffed full of money and those huge fancy hats with whole stuffed birds flopping on top of them.”

Hurley nodded. “I know the type.”

“I bet you do. Anyway, besides that, those trains don’t really make stops, on account of...well, on account of people like me, in fact. But they’ve got to slow when they get near towns, and I’m pretty damn quick. I just waited until I could run alongside it alright and then jumped off my horse and grabbed the ladder running up one side of the car. For all they brag about the security on those rides, wasn’t too much of a problem getting the window on one of the sleeper cars open, even while I was doing it upside down on from on top of the thing. That is except for the lady who kept screaming from inside while I was doing it.” 

They snorted. “That’s awful.”

She turned a little more animated as the plot rolled on. It may or may not have been the alcohol kicking in. “So of course, I’m going from car to car, and these people are practically throwing jewels and shit at me for me to take. I would’ve gotten smothered under a pile of ermine neck ruffs if I’d stood in one place long enough, that’s how loaded these people were. Didn’t even have to flash a knife or anything. They were already scared enough. That’s until I get to this one person. Some old-money asshole with a fucking cravat, and he’s got it pinned with some nice little ivory piece. He takes one look at me, and you wanna know what he does?” She paused. “Looks me dead in the eye and swallows the fucking thing.”

“No way!”

“Yeah, that’s right. Spouts some shit about how it’s a family heirloom and it was gonna take a lot more than a threat to get it out of him. So I looked him right back, and then I said, ‘Okay,’ and then I got him by the scruff of the neck and shoved him halfway out the window of this big old moving train. Loose skin flapping in the wind. Beautiful. Poor old guy was frightened out of his mind, just screaming his head off. And then I just held him there and waited.” She then took a long drink while staring straight ahead.

At last, they couldn’t bear it. “And? What happened?”

“Oh, I got it.”

“How?”

She gradually pulled her gaze away from the distance and to them. All the while, a sly, dry grin spread on her lips as she said nothing.

It took them a moment. “Oh, for the gods’ sake!” they tried to say between laughter. “Disgusting!”

“Yeah, well, you’ve heard the term ‘scared shitless,’ I’m sure.” This was the longest they had seen a smile persist on her by far. "Told you it was funny."

"You're lying," they said as they snickered. "There's no way that happened."

"No? It was in the papers. Just like I told it."

"Well, you can't trust the newspapers in a middle-of-nowhere little town like Burnham. They'll do anything to get a sensational story, even telling a tall tale."

"Damn right they will. By the time a story gets to them, it's already been told by a dishonest witness, to a friend with a flair for the dramatic, to a friend's friend who likes to shoot the shit with his bar buddies, to a friend's friend's mother who needs a story to share with her knitting circle. By that time, the Raven's a myth. That's what finally gets into the shitty papers." She glanced their way. "That's how I like it."

"People making up stories about you?"

"Sure. It gets them scared of me. Makes what I do easier."

"But it's not true."

"A story might as well be true if enough people believe it. If they're all going to act like it's the truth." 

“Most people don’t take so kindly to slander.”

“Well.” She did not elaborate.

They turned the meaning of her words over in their mind as they waited for the coyotes to stop, which they didn’t. Regardless, Hurley slept, finally. The Raven did not try to run or kill them in the night, which they felt they could count as a resounding success of an evening.

* * *

.After looking over all of their supplies, Hurley distinctly and quite reasonably thought to themself,  _ This is fine. _

So the dust storm had wrecked some of their food. (The perishable food, specifically, the small amount of vegetables and the much more respectable amount of dried meat that the posse had been eating for most of the trip. The canned things were left.) But the thing was, they reminded themself multiple times, what they had in the wagon was originally meant to be for five people. Five people's worth of water, five people's worth of food and sunburn cream. (All meant to last for a matter of no more than one more week.) That was good. Fantastic, even. It was all plenty to sustain two people for multiple weeks or more. (They calculated. The water, certainly, would last no more than seven days at the rate they were drinking it, probably three weeks or so if they started being more cautious. The water could do them both in.)

They steeled themself. Squared their shoulders in the privacy of the dim wagon. Nothing was about to do them in. Scarce resources were better than none, and they had practice in stretching things until they didn't seem so scarce anymore. They had always been adaptable. They were proud of that.

If they had to burn the wheels of the cart for firewood, then that would just be what they had to do.

As they took stock of what remained of the ropes and the horse tack that was now useless to them, they almost didn't hear the approach of footsteps behind them. When Hurley stepped out of the wagon and into the brilliant light, they found the Raven standing in front of them. She seemed to have been waiting for them. 

After awhile of nothing, Hurley tried, "Hi."

She did not return in kind. She was staring at them. To their surprise, her eyes were not narrowed or malicious this time, or at least didn't seem that way. They weren't sure what kind of look she had on her face, exactly. She just seemed to study them. 

They were just about to give the art of conversation another go when she finally, abruptly, sighed and held out her hands. Earlier, Hurley had manacled them. "Undo these," she said. 

They felt their eyebrows raise before they could stop them. Slowly, they responded, "I'll have to chain your legs first."

"I know," she murmured. She was glancing away from them now, her head slightly down. They could not quite make out her expression. 

They shrugged. "Alright." 

As soon as the handcuffs were off, she turned around. They watched her shuffle over and pick up the scuff-ridden guitar that had belonged to Barbra. Hurley had pulled it out and placed it in a pile of miscellany as they were sorting out the wagon. She quietly took it a little ways away and sat with it on the ground. 

They looked away. It was only a hunch, but they got the sense that she wouldn't appreciate them watching for too long.

It wasn't long before the sound reached them. First just random, fluctuating tones as she tuned the instrument that, judging by how long it took, had not seen tuning in some time. After that came melody. Low, strummed rumbles and high, keening notes. It was mournful and lovely. The song moved along at a slow, pensive, steady pace like the clop of a tired old horse. They felt it rocking them. 

The Raven wasn't singing, but they recognized the tune of "Wayfaring Stranger." They kept at their work of looking through everything and trying to deem what might be useful. It went a little faster now, a little more smoothly. They weren't sure if they were getting better at it or if they had simply been struggling to concentrate before, in the desert's lifeless silence.

They were just going to take a look at the gun, the one that the posse had pulled off the Raven when she got caught. It was an older model, and the outside was scuffed and dirty, something that had clearly seen almost as much desert dirt as she had. That only made it stranger when they rubbed their finger inside the barrel--it came out immaculate rather than being blackened with old traces of powder, as though it had almost never been fired at all. They tried again several times, and after that, looked at their incongruously clean hands. 

Slowly, they glanced toward the small collection of other things that she had had on her at the time of her capture. Briefly, Hurley wondered if they should go through them at all, even if, technically, they didn't really belong to her anymore. But they had to figure out somehow what of it was worth keeping, and letting her do it herself, allowing her to access her weapons and lock-picks and gods knew what else, seemed like a bad plan to say the least. They would just take a quick look themself.

There wasn't much to it regardless. The usual ropes and a couple steel plates and forks. There were, indeed, small implements that were likely for undoing locks. Knives, too, though they seemed more for skinning and carving and cutting than offense. They started looking at the smaller things. A tiny, rusted metal mirror. Feathers. Small bandages. Dice and coins, tucked away inside a drawstring leather pouch with fringe at the bottom and a little silver button showing what looked like a half-moon.

They almost didn't bother with the stick. She had a smooth, barkless gray branch from an old dead tree, with a small protrusion on one side that made for a nice, natural hand-hold. It was, they supposed, a walking stick, for when she had to cross long swaths of the desert on foot. There were random, aimless swirls in the wood that seemed to have been carved out by insects long ago, and then much sharper and deeper cuts put there deliberately. A crude carving of an arrow running up the side, a geometric pattern of diamonds. None of the designs seemed to fit together, and they seemed the result of boredom more than anything else.

Almost certainly, they would not have noticed it at all if not for the name. It was carved in blocky letters near the top of the thing, along with all the other etchings made into it. They looked at it for a long time. 

And they wondered.

They half-turned around and held the thing up. "Hey, Sloane, is this yours?"

Without hesitation--not for a moment--she stopped playing long enough to look at them and then grimace. "Yes, and stop going through my--" 

And then Sloane realized. It was all over her subtly reddening face.

Maybe it was bad of Hurley to feel so pleased with themself. They must have looked it too, because after she recovered from the initial shock, her eyes narrowed and rolled. That often happened when they smiled.

Suppressing a giggle, they took a few steps toward her, then stopped. They had a feeling that approaching her from behind is what had gotten them into trouble yesterday, startling her. They went around so that they could come up beside her and sit. "I'll still just call you the Raven, if you'd really rather."

Her jaw was set as she held her breath. Then, all at once, she let it out and slumped a little. "Whatever. That's my name and now you know it. Guess there's no reason for you not to call me that."

They nodded and sat a moment longer. "It's a pretty name."

This time, the change in her was almost imperceptible. Hurley just caught it out of the corner of their eye. A moment's pause, the way she straightened just slightly as though the words had taken her aback. They were learning to watch for these things.

Finally, when they glanced back at her, she was rubbing at a mark in the guitar, trying to determine if it was dust or a scratch. She was not looking at them. "Thanks," she murmured. Then, a little more boldly: "Picked it myself."

Hurley felt their grin grow. "Mine too."

"Huh. Well, yours is good too."

"I think so."

That, more or less, was the end of that. When, after a period of silence, she returned to playing, they schooled themself into not reacting. If they made a big deal of it, they feared, she would grow self-conscious and stop. Instead, they kept their gaze away from her and lay down on the ground. The earth was almost hot enough to burn the exposed skin on their back where their shirt rode up, but not quite. It just felt warm. They closed their eyes to the relentless blue above as they listened, and the whole world became the music and the dark red they saw behind their eyelids.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hanukkah ends 2nite. Hope everyone who celebrated had a joyous time!


	4. i know my pathway is rough and steep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: blood, animal death (both mentioned briefly)

"Absolutely no way."

"Oh, yes."

"Nope. Nope. You can't possibly hit that thing."

"Bet you anything I can."

Sloane snickered. "I'll take that bet. That bird is at well over a hundred meters away, faster than shit, and you're going at it with a goddamn revolver instead of a proper hunting rifle. Not possible." 

"Shh, don't let it hear you." Their heart pounded against the ground like a closed fist as they lay flat on their belly, fixed on the roadrunner. Without thinking about it, they did what they always did, tilting the gun up an inch for every twenty meters. Just like hitting clay. They aimed for the question mark-shaped neck. Next to them, Sloane, meanwhile, had rolled onto her back with her hand flopped lazily over her stomach. Her neck was arched all the way back to look at the bird with a droll grin. She was looking at the thing upside-down. What did she know anyway?

"It's not gonna hear shit from this distance, which is, I'll remind you, very fucking far," she said. 

"It could! You don't know!"

"You manage to hit that thing, I'll eat my ha--"

They shot, and the bird dropped with nary a squawk.

Hurley popped up from the ground. First they smiled at the still dark lump on the ground very fucking far in front of them, then, without changing their expression, turned to a gaping Sloane. When she glanced their way, they raised their eyebrows and swung their revolver by the trigger guard, back and forth, on one finger. Admittedly, they made a show of milking it. 

She snapped her mouth shut and narrowed her eyes. Then, without so much as a sigh, she removed her hat, walked over towards the unlit fire pit, held it for a moment over the skillet sitting nearby, and, with a certain solemnity, dropped it. 

They laughed. She didn't, but she smiled in this particular way they had come to recognize, where she wrinkled her nose, as though it were a grin repurposed from a failed sneer.

"I'll go grab the bird," they said.

She watched them the whole time they were walking back. When they got close enough, they could see the studying glint in her eye, her head cocked. 

"Hey," she said. A second later, she tossed an empty can into the air. They drew and picked it off, hearing the satisfying tang as the bullet connected. 

They took a moment to watch it fall to earth, diverted from its original course, before looking back at her. "Whoo!" They pumped their fists in the air, despite the fact that a carcass still swung from one. 

She chuckled. "Damn." Holding her hand out toward the bird, she said, "Give me that." When they handed it over, she started plucking the feathers. 

"You don't have to do that."

"It's fine. You ever had roadrunner before?"

"Nope. Have you?"

"Oh, a few times. It's alright."

"So you've shot them before!" They sat beside her cross-legged to watch her work. "Why were you giving me shit about it just now?"

"No, I've only trapped them. Just a few times, when I'm away from any towns for a good long while."

"Isn't that harder?"

"Yes, which is why you should be impressed." She glanced at them, then went on, "Also, I'm a terrible shot. Things look blurry to me when they're at that distance away, so there wasn't much point in learning." 

"Really?" As her words sank in, they felt their previous excitement congeal in them like a blood clot, stopping them up. They wondered if she might be lying, but they weren't good at spotting that kind of thing in anyone, least of all her. She had not tensed or looked away as she had spoken, at least that they had seen. She just kept pulling the feathers. Anyway, it would have made for an odd thing to lie about in this moment. 

The number 113 flashed through Hurley's head over and over. Abernathy had been shot from 113 meters away, the distance from the door of the bank to the general store's porch. Her bad sight and the clean gun and the fact that--they could tell--she hadn't thought to shoot when she had gotten caught. Her reaction to simply hitting Hurley in the nose. Would the law know all that? Would it care? It wasn't what one would call hard evidence, certainly nothing capable of proving her innocence, but it didn't add up. What did it mean to bring her back to a Goldcliff unaware of such things?

They didn't ask all that. Instead, they pushed past the stewing in their guts to ask, "Are you often out here for a long time?"

She shrugged. "Depends. Sometimes I have a harder time getting some sheriff off my trail, and I have to hide out here a little longer before I go back to a town. I can be here for a few weeks without much of a problem." She cocked her brow at them and jabbed, "When I'm prepared."

They flicked a spot of dried mud from their boot. "That sounds lonely," they said in the most neutral way they could, which was probably not very.

She snorted. "No. The quiet's nice out here."

Hurley looked around. "I think I agree. It's funny. I didn't like that about it when I first got out here, but being in a place that's sort of...stuck out of time, that's a nice distance to have."

"You can disappear, yeah." She passed the featherless carcass to them, and they began to slice its belly.

"I wouldn't want it all the time, though. Eventually I think I'd want someone around."

"I don't like answering to anybody."

"I'm aware of that," they said with a grin. 

"Well, do you? 'Cause you seem like you'd rather be the person people answer to."

"Do I?" They paused when their knife was partway through the thin, shining muscle under the skin as they held the bird over the dead charcoals. The blood rose up out of it and dribbled onto the ashes, so that it would be soaked up. "I don't think it has to be about answering to anyone. You can just be with people."

"Where'd you learn to shoot?"

"Well, when I was young, maybe seven or eight, my mother--"

"Oh, gods."

"Hey, do you want to know or not?"

"Yeah, yeah, it's just I should've known you'd make it something sentimental." She gave them a flippant wave while still looking down at the roadrunner. Hurley chose to be optimistic and assume that was her version of a joke. "Go on."

They huffed. “Well, I’ll make it quick for both our sakes, I guess. I was gonna say that my mother always told me I thought with my belly.”

“Huh. Rude.”

“No, she didn’t mean it like that. She meant I listen to my gut before anyone else, including her, or my own brain. Like how I’d go running out the door in my underwear to frighten off the foxes if I thought I heard them near the chickens. I was maybe three when I did this, I should mention.”

“Oh, wonderful.”

“Anyway, finally Mom decided that if I was going to keep running into things without thinking about them, I might as well figure out how to protect myself while I did it. I started off with a slingshot when I was maybe seven, but I wanted a gun before long. She managed to put off giving me one until I was, oh, twelve or so.”

Sloane chuckled. “Very irresponsible. I love it.”

“Hey, at least she found someone to teach me before she let me lay my hands on the thing myself. I’ve been practicing ever since.”

“I can tell.”

“Yeah.” 

It was some time before either of them spoke again. Several times, Hurley took in a big breath to speak, held it and let it grow hot and tight inside their chest, and then let it all out. The sun had melted into a band of fading yellow on the horizon. 

Finally, they said, “Hey, let me switch out your shackles.”

They went to chain her ankles so that they could remove the irons around her wrist, but she rolled out of the way at the last second, flopping onto her back. “Nah, don’t feel like it,” she answered, playing up the lazy tone. 

Hurley snorted. “Don’t be an ass, come on.”

This time, she flipped over onto her belly, still skirting just out of reach. Her head was in her hands as she fixed them with a playful grin. “You gotta catch me first if you want to do that, Red. I thought you were good at that.”

They stared her down and made a point of being unsmiling. “Sloane, it’s got to happen eventually anyway.

The smile slid from her face fast. She cast her eyes down to the ground. When she finally let them approach, it was while she was turned away from them and looking out to the fading light. She had closed. 

Over the nearly three weeks that they had been on their own together, this was what Hurley had come to dread far more than the dark of the nights and the heat of the days. It was the feeling of collapse, of having to knock down something that they had built up themself. Because they could almost pretend, before they remembered the chains again. It seemed, sometimes, that she almost forgot them as well. 

They had been sleeping closer together lately. On a particularly cold night, Sloane had even conceded to being under the same blanket with them, so long as Hurley kept their hands curled up against their chest. But it wouldn’t be tonight, regardless of how much either of them shivered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> U bet your ass I don't take breaks posting fanfic for the holidays this is my gift to u all
> 
> In all seriousness, merry Christmas to those celebrating! There's a lot of pressure to be cheerful and optimistic today/this season, and that can be hard when there's so much happening that's awful. I hope you let yourself feel melancholy when it's warranted today, and that you find a little comfort and light as well. Bring joy to someone else if you can!
> 
> Please leave a comment if you care to.


	5. golden fields lie out before me

Hurley had seen it coming for days, but even so, they felt a wave of sickness when they picked up the canteen and heard no more than two or three mouthfuls of water slosh around the metal interior. 

It shouldn't have startled them the way it did. After all, they had been rationing their own water for a reason. They had been taking it by the capful like medicine doses, getting just enough to moisten their tongue, as if they could trick their body into feeling quenched. It took maybe an hour to sweat out that amount. Still, they had kept trying to enact a miracle, drinking smaller and smaller portions so that the supply would never quite run out, so that it would be effectively infinite. Ridiculous as that was, it kept them from considering the alternative. Which is why the alternative hit them harder than expected, when it became reality.

The inside of their throat itched. They wondered how parched their mouth would have to get before they became unable to speak, and then they squeezed their eyes shut, as though they could squeeze the idea out of their mind. Instead, they focused on the fact--and it was a fact, if they decided so--that they would not die of thirst. They called to mind the math that they had been churning through their head for days. There was one other full canteen of this size left. If they kept activity levels low and drank as little as possible, it could last two and a half days. A full three, maybe, if they were really careful. Then they would have the rest of the alcohol, which might dehydrate more than it helped, and then nothing at all.

Or they could leave behind everything here in search of more. And that would mean everything. 

They left the supplies in the wagon and stuck their hand in their pocket so they could feel the teeth of the cuff key against the pad of their thumb. Outside, Sloane plucked out the notes to what sounded like some hymn they'd once known. When they walked up and sat silently a little ways from her, she only nodded once before going back to the music. Over the past few days, they had never told her to ration her own water. It had seemed unfair, when they were supposed to be the one looking out for her, and anyway, it had turned out to be unnecessary. They hadn't seen her take more than a sip at a time lately. That shouldn't have surprised them, given how often she stayed out here. What did catch their notice was the way that, when she drank, she would often glance over at them from under a furrowed brow, over and over. 

But right now, she kept quietly twanging out the melody. The guitar hummed and whined. They looked at the sky above and found it as bone-dry and flat at the ground below. It was so, so very blue. They shut their eyes to it and simply focused on the sounds. She was making beautiful things happen over there. They hadn't noticed how quickly their heart had been beating until it began to slow, then. They listened until they started to feel the vibrations of the strings buzz inside their mind.

_That's that little gut talking._ Their mother poked their belly again, pressed her ear to it.

"I don't think you killed anyone," they said, and as they did, they realized, for the first time, that they really did believe it.

"Uh," Sloane said. "Thank you?"

They pressed on. "Am I right?"

"What?"

"Tell me whether I'm right. Did you kill anybody?"

They heard her make a derisive sound. "Why are you asking all of a sudden? It's just my word against everyone else's anyway. It won't make a--"

"I want to hear you say it." For the first time, they looked her in the eye. 

There had been a small, lackadaisical grin on her face, but it was erased when they stared at her. She seemed abashed, then confused, but crucially, she held eye contact when she finally spoke. "No, Hurley," she said quietly. "I didn't kill anyone."

"Yeah," they breathed. "That's what I thought." Things went quiet again. Hurley thought of Bane, of one-person juries. They thought of the way he looked when he said that a bounty hunter was not a judge. Then, regardless, they stood up and said, "Sloane, come here."

"Well, alright, then, Your Highness."

They rolled their eyes. They should have expected that nothing would be easy right up until the end. "Please?"

She waited a moment longer, one brow cocked. Then she set down her instrument and took a few slow steps over. As soon as she was close enough, Hurley bent down and unlocked the shackles around her ankles with hands that, they were proud to say, stayed steady the whole time. 

She took off before they could blink. Turned on her heel quickly enough to kick sand in their face. Like she had been waiting for it, which she had. In the seconds afterward, the air around them felt strange and unusually still, the way it did just after a deafening sound. They hadn't exactly expected a long goodbye, but they had thought that she wouldn't leave without a word--that she would at least take the time to get supplies. But that was it, the. Well, it wasn't as if she owed them anything.

They thought that the flapping wing of her black hair behind her was the last they would see of her. Then, almost as quickly as she had started running, she stopped. She looked behind her, and the positively gleeful smile on her face faltered. After a few seconds, she slowed and then halted all together, simply standing and staring Hurley's way. 

They looked right back at her. It seemed like she was waiting for something from them, though what, they couldn't say. After awhile, they simply gave a small shrug. "You're free to go.” They picked up the chains from the ground, hung them on their forearm, and started to walk away. 

"Hey, wait!" 

They did. She was poised to dart off again at any moment, but she didn't. Instead, she kept on blinking and blinking at Hurley, mouth open. "Why aren't...you're not going to come after me?"

"Nope." 

Over and over again, she looked down at her feet, as if to ensure that the manacles were really gone. "Did you..." she started shakily. "Did you do that on purpose?"

They chuckled in spite of the strange sinking feeling inside their chest. "You don't really still think I'm that dense, do you? I wouldn't have let that happen by accident."

By now, she had transitioned from confusion to outright shock. Her head whipped back and forth rapidly, from the horizon and the open space to Hurley again. Then, suddenly, she shook her head. "Nononononono." She wagged her finger and, for some bizarre reason, laughed without humor. "Come on, what are you trying to do?"

"Um." Briefly, they looked around at the hobbled wagon with its missing wheels, the dust-covered pile of second-hand cooking supplies, and the stretch of flat nothing for miles around. "Listen, I don't know what kind of nasty plan you think I have in mind, but I'm probably not equipped for it."

"Ha!"

"I don't think you're getting it. I'm letting you go, alright? Isn't that all you've been trying to do for this entire time, is get away from me?"

"I could've done it myself," she blurted. 

"Okay--"

"I could've."

"Well, for the gods' sake, do you want to come over here so I can try to let you go again? I'll try to make it look like an accident this time if that makes you feel bett--"

"No! No, I'm just..." She let out a long breath and ran a hand down her tired face. "I'm just trying to...this doesn't make any fucking sense! Why now?"

They sighed. Their saliva was thick and tasted bitter. "I failed. I said I was going to bring us both back to Goldcliff in one piece, but I can't do that. Not with how we're running low on supplies. And I'm not going to risk your life trying to do it. You didn't sign up for that. So there. What? What do you want? This?" They held up the key to the cuffs. As they tossed it on the ground in front of her feet, out of their own reach, they said, "Take it! I don't need it anymore." She kept on standing there. Finally, they huffed and extended their arm in the direction of the Western sun behind her. "Go. I'm serious."

Sloane still didn't move. Her arms had fallen down to her sides, and she was no longer in a position to flee. She just continued looking on. When, finally, she spoke, it was in a far smaller voice than before. "Posters say 'Dead or Alive.'"

It took a moment for them to process the meaning of that, but when they did, it hit them right between the eyes. First they felt the surprise and then the sting of it. "You really think I'd kill you for the money?"

There was a moment of quiet--consideration, maybe?--before she answered, "Guess not."

"What, then? That I'd keep you here when there wasn't enough water for the both of us? That I would...that I'd stop letting you have what was left? Seriously, you believe I'd do that?"

By now her eyes were cast downward. She took a deep breath and turned her head away. "Dunno. I've only known you for a few weeks," she mumbled. 

They shouldn't have felt insulted. It was true, after all--their job had been to get the Raven, or rather her body, back to town one way or another. And even if they had never intended to harm her, there was no reason they should have expected a prisoner to think any better of her captor. But maybe they had expected it anyway. After sleeping side-by-side for many nights and talking through the days, they thought that they had opened enough of themself to her, that she would have been able to just look and see for herself who they were. "Well, I wouldn't," they said quietly. Their back was to her now. 

They had gone back to sorting through supplies, to see what they would need to go on living, when they heard the slow approach of footsteps from behind. She picked up the key from the ground before she kept stepping, almost gingerly, toward them. She stopped well before she was within their reach, but still, she was close enough now that they could get a good look at her eyes, which were wide and wondering. "You're serious, aren't you? I'm free?" A smile had begun to form on her lips as she spoke.

They weren't sure whether to laugh or moan in frustration. They did a little of both. "Yes, you seriously are."

She laughed in a way that they hadn't heard her laugh yet, soft and high, almost a twitter. Already, the way she carried herself was different, her back straighter and her movements looser. It looked as if a weight, heavier than the weight of the irons alone, had been taken off her. They felt a little lighter too. 

A moment later, though, she snapped back to look at them, her smile sloughing. "What about you? I mean, what are you going to do if not stay out here?"

Hurley swallowed. It was an excellent question, and one that they hadn’t really allowed themself to think too hard about before now. They sucked in a breath and tried to grin. "Well, start walking just like you, I suppose, right? I’ll just sort of retrace the steps I took to get here with the posse before.”

Sloane snorted. “Okay,” she chuckled.

“Okay what?”

“No, I’m sure you’ll do just great out there.”

Hurley scoffed as they started putting together a sack of what remaining supplies they could carry. “I can take care of myself.”

“Which way’s the river?”

They paused to think for an amount of time that was unlikely to inspire confidence, then abruptly pointed behind them.

“Was that a guess?”

“No.” It only took a few more seconds of her staring at them until they conceded, “...Yeah.”

“The biggest bend in it is quite a few days’ walk off to the northwest,” she sighed. Hurley went back to shoving cans into their sack, until she kept walking up to them and closed the gap. She plucked the strap of the bag from their hands. “And you shouldn’t be traveling this time of day either. You know it’s too hot.”

They looked at her. “Well, you shouldn’t be either.”

“Guess not.”

They stood there for a little while. 

Sloane scuffed her foot in the sand and muttered, “I didn’t think, um...this is really weird. I guess I should thank you?”

“You could.” Hurley bit their lip. “Do you want to get stuff to take with you, since you’re not leaving yet? You can take back all the stuff the posse took off you.”

“Sure,” she said slowly as she shuffled toward the wagon. Hurley listened to the shifting of supplies as she sorted through them and tried to ignore what felt like a metal weight hanging down inside their gut. 

As Sloane gathered things up, there was a question plain on her almost dazed face. But it wasn’t until she had turned away from Hurley and crouched down to look through bags of food that she asked, “You know where to get water?”

Hurley paused, then glanced her way. She still had her back to them. “Do you?”

“I mean, I know how to find it.” She was working more quickly now and seemed to grab things almost without looking. “I figure the least I can do is get you some water too, if you want to come with me.”

“How far will we have to go?”

“Don’t know. Could take a few hours, could take a day.”

“Well, I don’t want to leave camp for a whole day if I’m just going to come back to it after we get water.”

She stopped, finally, and quietly replied, “Then I guess you should just pack up and leave along with me.”

“What?”

She said, "We could," and then, under her breath, "shit." When she at last turned around and met their gaze, her eyes were hard. "Look, I can help you get back to Goldcliff, but we're doing it my way, alright? I'm not gonna take the main routes and risk getting caught all over again. Take it or leave it."

They were stuck on the "I can help" bit of that. "I'm sorry?"

"I'm..." She huffed. "I don't feel good about leaving you on your own out here right after you just up and let me go. It doesn't seem right. I can help you out."

"You don't have to do that, though."

"No, I don't. But I know this part of the desert a lot better than you, so..."

"Are you saying we have a truce?"

Before that moment, she had appeared disinterested, almost flippant. Her arms were crossed, and her half-lidded eyes had shifted to look off into the distance. Now, she seemed to snap to attention, brows raised. "Yes," she said slowly, as if it were occurring to her while she spoke. "I guess you'd call it that."

They felt a smile come across their face before they could stop it. “Alright,” they said. “Of course. Thank you.”

“Early tomorrow, then.”

* * *

They did indeed leave the following morning with what they could carry on their backs. Shortly after rising, the sun looked honey-golden and honey-sweet. The closer they got to high noon, it would turn cruel as always, but that seemed a ways off.

Hurley followed her. They watched the sheen of the sun bounce off her hair. They also watched as, now and then, she glanced back toward them, then turned away again. Like she wanted to see whether they were still behind her, or like she was watching her back. 

When she had told them that she wasn’t Abernathy’s murderer, they had believed her, genuinely. That didn’t make this less strange, to be guided blindly to some unknown place by someone who was, at the very least, a career criminal.

By now, they knew that the desert’s inhabitants came alive near dawn. Mice and scorpions and lizards would start scurrying around at first light to gather food before the day got too hot. Still, Hurley hadn’t had to contend with so many flying insects since they had first arrived here. They tried to fan away the gnats that kept flying in their face. More than once, a tiny biting fly landed on their skin, and they tried to slap it down. 

Suddenly, there were fingers gripping their arm. Sloane was in front of them, suddenly, and they were instinctively about to wrench themself away until they saw that she wasn’t doing anything else. She was just staring at the crook of their elbow, where, they now saw, another fly had settled.

Both of them watched the little black creature sit there for awhile before lifting off and into the sky. Sloane tracked it with her eyes as it flew until it became less than a speck in the blue sky. Then, definitively, she walked off in the direction in which the fly had gone. 

Hurley considered that it wasn’t too late for them to go their own way. Then, after several moments’ hesitation, they walked after her. 

The bugs didn’t let up as they went and went. They only seemed to get more plentiful. It seemed like the two of them would never quit just walking, and Hurley thought about saying as much until they looked up once more and saw. Instead of the scrub that they had gotten used to over the past weeks, greener, smoother plants with broad, tapered leaves began to dominate. It was some of the first green they had seen so far. 

Soon enough, Sloane stopped close to one of the larger plants and dropped to her knees. The ground was softer here, and she began to turn it over with her hands. When Hurley realized what she was doing, they went over to help her dig, feeling the dirt beneath so much cooler than that at the surface. 

When the water came up, it sparkled. For a moment, Hurley could only stare at it, until Sloane dipped a cloth into it and wrung it out over her head, so that the drops fell down her dusty face. More liquid came bubbling up out of the hole to take its place, sprung from the ground fresh and clean as a sprout.

A moment ago, they had kept themself from considering the possibility that they wouldn't get through, but a possibility is what it had been. Now even the air inside their lungs felt like less of a burden, like air indeed instead of something dense and heavy. Now the idea of not surviving seemed like no more than a bad dream. The very ground did not feel so hard beneath them.

“Yes!” they shouted as they jumped to their feet. “Holy shit, you did it!”

Sloane seemed a little taken aback, then said, “Good gods, relax, I do this all the time,” but said it with a slowly growing grin.

“That doesn’t mean it’s not amazing,” they said as they scrambled to take advantage of the plenty. They barely knew what to do with themself, whether to drink or wash their face or fill up their canteens. They cupped their hand and dipped it into the little pool and let the coolness watch down their throat.

When they finally looked away from the water, they saw Sloane watching them, her head tilted a little to the side. Without thinking, they got up, feeling like they wanted to hug her, and then stopped short. Instead, they just took both of her hands in theirs, beaming. She let them. "Thank you," they said in a hush. "Thank you, Sloane. This is incredible."

She only stared and stared at them, then quickly shook her head as if to snap out of a trance. “It’s fine,” she muttered. “Um, so do you want to keep going soon?”

“Yeah, let’s.” And they realized, suddenly, that they would not be alone. They would still have a voice to anchor them in the darkness, music around the fire. They would not go crazy at night, thinking that they were floating apart from the rest of the world in directionless darkness. Her presence would be proof positive that they had not been left alone completely. It was peculiar, their realizing that they had learned to like the nights.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Jan. 1st fuckos if you're reading this you made it to the end of 2020 alive
> 
> Thank you so so much for reading this far and please don't hesitate to comment! Also I can't remember if I've said this before but feel free to talk to me on tumblr @literalliterature or @adventuresloane if u want.


	6. no more to roam

Sloane liked to keep to the networks of slot canyons when they could. She said that, lucky for the both of them, they were safe to travel this time of year, since it wasn't the season for storms and flash floods. The way through them was twisting and took them out of their way at times, not to mention that they sometimes had to squirm sideways through thin bottlenecks. They sucked in their bellies so that they would not be cut open by the sides of the walls. But it was out of the way of roads and anyone who might spot them, which is what she was concerned with.

In the moment, Hurley hardly cared why they were there. Never in their life had they known such color. Red and orange and purple and yellow dripped down the sides of the canyon in every shade, ran in paintbrush streaks along the jagged points and curving contours of the edges. The stone was alive with it. It moved and changed as surely as the traveling sun, shifting in tones and brilliance as the light struck it differently throughout the day. They were awash with color. When they looked up, they found the vein of blue turquoise between the narrow stone walls. The sky was not so overwhelming now.

  
  


They forgot themself more than once. They would slow almost to a stop as they wondered at the color around them, or they would get too far ahead to look around the next corner until Sloane called out that they were going the wrong way. At a couple points, they wondered if they were slowing her down, but whenever they looked back, she had a grin on her face and her head cocked to the side in amusement. The longer they went on, in fact, the more easily she laughed. Hurley understood. They had to laugh at themself too. They couldn't stop tracing their finger along the smooth grooves in the walls. They felt like a silly child, and that felt okay.

  
  


Hurley picked up red pebbles, the clean bones of mice and lizards. At one point, they found the smooth skull of a ram and carried it in their hand by the horn. When she asked, they told her that they couldn't help but collect. Terminal sentimentality, their mother had called it. They had always needed attachment points for their memory, a solid foothold that they could feel for themself. And these were things they weren't eager to forget.

  
  


She just shrugged. "You wanna lug all that shit around the whole walk back, be my guest," she quipped. But they didn't miss the way that she kicked interesting rocks into their path for them to pick up, the couple of animal teeth she handed them.

* * *

"You know, you're always playing sad songs."

  
  


She stopped strumming in the middle of a line and gave Hurley a questioning look. She had been playing "Hard Times."

  
  


"I mean, there's nothing really wrong with it," Hurley continued. "It all sounds beautiful. I just noticed."

  
  


"What would you rather I played?"

  
  


"Well, I don't know. Which songs do you know?"

"A lot."

"Are any of them a little more upbeat? If that's the kind of thing you like, that is."

  
  


Sloane made a noise that was something between a laugh and a scoff and shook her head slowly a few times. But then she looked down at her strings and seemed to consider. Then she seemed to nod to herself and started again. This time, the melody was quick and bounding, almost bouncy. The twangs of the guitar were sharp and bright. Without thinking about it, Hurley began to nod their head to it.

It did sound cheerful, but then she began to sing. The chorus came in a rich chest voice with just a tinge of roughness. _"Set out runnin', but I'll take my time/A friend of the devil is a friend of mine/If I get home before daylight/I just might get some sleep tonight."_

She had just recently begun singing along when she played, and it always began quietly. It was almost as if she were trying to make it seem incidental, being casual about it. As the night wore on, though, she'd get louder, put more character and variation into the lyrics. She'd start to smile more as she went on, too. Sometimes her ears would slowly shift in position, rising up to show her excitement. Every now and then, she'd seem to notice and quickly put them down again, only for them to prick back up gradually over time.

When she was finished, she looked at them, seeming just a bit expectant. "That was pretty," they said. "It wasn't really happy, though."

"What are you talking about? Of course it was happy."

"The music was, but not the words."

She let out a long sigh, but not the kind that meant she was actually annoyed. "Whatever. It makes me plenty happy. Makes me think of some of the times I got away." She paused, then said, "I learned it when I was living with some herders."

"Were you a cowpuncher yourself?"

  
  


"Oh, tried to be, at one point," she said with a one-shouldered shrug.

  
  


"No way! Was it good? What happened?"

  
  


"Eh, it didn't last long. I was only fifteen when I started trying for that. I was making a lot of changes at the time. First time I'd left my father's ranch, for one thing. Plus, no one cares much who you are out there so long as you can toss a rope alright. I started letting people know I was a girl, too, and hardly anyone blinked."

"That all sounds amazing to me."

She shook her head and gave an almost baleful smile. "It did to me at the time, too. I thought running away to chase after longhorns would be a brilliant idea back then. It wasn't too bad, really. I didn't last, obviously, but I learned a lot. A lot about how to live out in the open, for one. And things that got me ready for what I do now."

  
  


"Stealing, you mean? How's that, _vaquera_?"

  
  


"Well, like riding and running. You learn how to navigate your way out of a panicking cowherd on the job. Not so easy to dodge slip between all those hooves and big bodies without getting pummeled, especially if you've lost your horse." She smirked. "And not so different from being surrounded by six bounty hunters and finding my way out of that shit. You know what those papers say about it. They all jumped on the Raven, but all they caught was each other's arms and legs. I slipped out and was gone in a flash. Like I just poofed right out of existence in front of them."

  
  


Hurley snorted. "Now you're just repeating those tall tales bored old folks say when they need an interesting story to pass around the bar."

  
  


"Well, it is an interesting story, isn't it?"

  
  


"Maybe, but I'd like to know what actually happened." They peered at her. "Who are you, really, Ms. Devil?"

  
  


Her glance was appraising. She looked down at them, eyebrows raised and grin sly. Then she chuckled and reached into her pocket for a coin. "A story for a story, Red," she said. "You tell one and I'll tell one. We'll flip for who goes first."

  
  


"Hold on a minute. You can do all those coin disappearing tricks! What if you rig it?"

  
  


"Oh my gods, you're ridiculous. I'm not going to rig it."

  
  


"Bet you will."

  
  


Ignoring them, she threw the penny into the air.

  
  


"Heads!" Hurley called.

  
  


She caught the coin in her palm and, without looking at it, smacked it down onto the back of her other hand. Strictly for the purpose of agonizing Hurley more, it seemed, she flicked her eyes over towards them, still beaming. Mischief all the way down.

  
  


"You absolutely rigged it."

  
  


She pulled her fingers away to look at the coin, and given the way she immediately bit down on her lip in a failed attempt to hold back a laugh, they had no need for her to tell them it was tails. "I fucking knew it! You did!" They gave her a playful shove, both knocking against each other, giggling in high pitches. They knew that they were acting like a child, and it was almost on purpose. If not now--when they were out here with almost no one else to see them--when? They hadn't felt enough like a child back when they actually were a child, they were realizing.

  
  


"I didn't!" she tried to say over her giggles. "I didn't, it was a 50/50 chance. You're a terrible loser!"

  
  


"Alright, alright. What story do you want to hear from me?"

  
  


"What brought you to Goldcliff?" Sloane asked. "You told me you're not from there originally, right?"

  
  


"No. I'm not from anywhere around the desert, actually."

"No shit."

"Hush, you. I used to live further east, in the plains. In Hylra. My family owned a big farm out there. We were planters, mostly, but we kept animals too, for ourself and to sell both."

  
  


"Aha," she said with a bit of a glint in her eye. "So we were always rivals, huh?"

  
  


"I guess you're right. A farmer and a cowhand. No wonder we didn't get along at first." It wasn't until they said that, really, that they realized how well they were getting along now. Very. They continued, "I loved it out there, though. I don't remember this, but my mom used to say as soon as I learned to run, I would go tearing off through the tall grasses. Only they were a lot taller than me at the time, so I would just sort of keep jumping up along the way trying to see where I was going. She'd just see my little head popping up."

  
  


She let out an ugly snort at that.

  
  


"'Course I had to stop that once Mom adopted my other siblings. There were five of us, plus her. I helped take care of the others. I just remember it was the middle of nowhere, kind of like here if here had all kinds of green, and we had nothing to do but sit around with each other at night.

  
  


Sloane nodded, then stopped. "So what happened to all that?"

  
  


"Well, Mom died, is what happened." She didn't move or even look terribly surprised, but they did notice that she stopped fiddling with the penny still in her hand. They could say that in a way that sounded level nowadays. For years, they hadn't been able. "I...well, I tried to keep it together. For a couple years I tried to run the place without her. But I was young. I didn't know shit about how it operated, really--helping with harvests and animal births will teach you a lot, but not how to run something that big. All my siblings left the place one by one. I think now I understand why. Maybe if I were less stubborn, I would have gone sooner, too, because it was damn hard even being there without her, especially when the place was failing."

  
  


They took a deep breath before they continued, "I had a lot of anger at the time, though. I was the last one there, and it ended up being for nothing. The landlords and middlemen took too much out of the place and eventually got sick of waiting for money. I guess I was like you for awhile, just wandering around and not knowing quite what to do. That's how I got into plenty of fights. It took me a fair amount of time to straighten out, if that's what I've done at all."

  
  


The night insects droned as they often did. They made the air sizzle with sound. Hurley looked up at the clear sky, at the brightness of the black.

  
  


When they felt that it had been awhile, they slowly looked over at Sloane. Her wrists rested on her knees as she stared into the fire. The orange light set off sparks in her wide eyes and deepened the shadows around her downturned mouth.

  
  


It took her a moment for her to realize that they were looking at her, and when she did, she only glanced at them once before quickly looking away. Very eloquently, she said, “Huh.”

  
  


“So...that’s my story.”

  
  


“Yeah, I guess it is.” Another beat, or rather several, of silence. “I mean, I just like...we were having some laughs and then you just kind of spilled your whole soul to me.”

  
  


“What? So I ruined the fun, is what you’re saying?”

  
  


“No, no, that’s not what I meant. I just don’t really have anything that can follow that up. Um...the thing that actually happened to me was that it was really two bounty hunters, not six, and they didn’t even get that close to me. Just embellished what happened when they told people that I’d gotten away from them.” She flicked a pebble lying on the ground. “Fake story’s more interesting, like I said.”

  
  


“Hmm…” They scooted a little closer to her. "How about this, then: why the Raven? You gave yourself that nickname, not the papers, right?"

  
  


"Oh, that's easy. It's because ravens are assholes, and I'm also an asshole."

  
  


"Well, lots of animals are assholes."

  
  


"Yes, but most of them don't mean to be. Ravens are assholes just for the fuck of it, and they know it."

  
  


"I don't follow."

  
  


“They’ll go after eagles, you know. Chase them. Sometimes it’s to get food from them or get them out of their territory, but you know what? Sometimes the ravens fuck with other animals for the fun of it and nothing else. They’ll dive onto the big birds’ backs and try to ride them through the sky like they’re mustangs.” She leaned back. They saw the expanse of her neck as she tilted her head toward the stars, like she were expecting the birds to materialize from the dark sky. “That’s what I like about them. They screw with things bigger than them just because they like it.”

  
  


“And that’s you? Do you steal because you like it? Or do you do it because they have to?”

  
  


“Why does it have to be ‘or?’” she retorted with a half-shrug. “It’s all I know how to do, and I enjoy it. That a problem for you, bounty hunter? That I’m not some starving waif stealing out of necessity and instead I enjoy sin and depravity as much as everyone says?”

  
  


Hurley just smiled and shook their head at her baiting tone. “Please don’t flatter yourself, Devil.”

  
  


“Hmm?”

  
  


“You’re not that bad.”

  
  


At that, she paused, just for a moment. Then, abruptly, she shook her head to clear the wisps of hair from her face. “Shows what you know. Anyway, I think I still owe you an actual story. You ever hear about Raven stealing the sun? Not me, another Raven. It’s an old legend.”

  
  


“I haven’t.” They turned their whole body to face her, crossing their legs and settling in. She did the same in return. “Let’s hear it.”

* * *

The stones rising from the ground gradually melted into soft dunes as they left the badlands. The sand sank and slipped under Hurley's feet, like mud without the wetness. In the heat, it made for slow going. But, either because she was taller or because she was used to the terrain, Sloane seemed to have an easier time. They found themself stepping inside the footprints that she made as they followed her trail, to save some of their energy. It helped, even though her stride was longer than theirs. It didn't take her long to look over her shoulder and notice, but she only grinned and kept going when she did.

  
  


At one point, she came to a stop, and Hurley looked to see a trail of curved lines, diagonal to one another, stretching up and over the gentle slope of one of the dunes. They looked like a child had drawn swishes into the sand with their finger, except that they were the same drawing repeated, on and on into the distance. These, along with their and Sloane's own prints, were the only interruptions on the surface of the still sand ocean with its great waves frozen in place.

  
  


"Sidewinder," she said, as an explanation and as a sound of appreciation. Hurley was learning the things that she went soft for.

  
  


They appreciated it, too. They looked at the snake's strange tracks stretching away from them and thought they looked like the stitches in a quilt. They imagined that they were looking at the very seam that held the earth together.

* * *

Hurley didn’t know that they were getting close to the river until they heard its grumbling from a distance, a low and endless roll of thunder. The Grist shone like a blade dug into the stony yellow earth, and the sloping banks it had carved out held more vegetation than they had seen in the weeks since they had been in the desert. Here, where it was still fairly open, the surface looked calm. The rapids that they knew well wouldn’t show up until they got into the canyons as they kept following the river’s path.

  
  


This was a good thing. They told themself that as they drank the first water in days that hadn’t come from underground or from the trunk of a cactus. This was a sight they had been waiting to behold. Anxious for.

  
  


“One more day, huh?”

  
  


Hurley nearly jumped, that night, when they heard Sloane speak up next to them. To be fair, the two of them hadn’t spoken much all day. She was looking at them, all of a sudden, having stopped her guitar playing. Hurley felt the scratch in their throat as they spoke, this time the result of disuse rather than thirst. “You think we’ll get back tomorrow?”

  
  


“Sure. Definitely by evening. Town’s not far away.”

  
  


They knew that already. In truth, they were surprised that Sloane was still here. Like a person watching for lightning bolts coming out of the blue sky, they had walked all day waiting. At some point, they were sure, Sloane would tell them that it was time for the both of them to part. They didn’t need her guidance anymore. Anyone could’ve followed the river back to Goldcliff, which sat on a cliff jutting directly above its foam.

But she hadn’t said that. Not yet.

"It doesn't seem real," they mumbled.

"Hmm? What doesn't?"

"That we'll be back so soon. I...it feels like I've been out here for so long."

Sloane shrugged. "It can be strange adjusting to the rest of the world again. When you've been out here with just yourself long enough, first time you see another person again, you almost think it's a mirage. One reason why I don't like to get too comfy in towns myself." She cast them a sideways glance, which, like many such glances of hers, seemed to say something in a language they were just now learning. "I get the feeling you'll be fine, though."

"It's not that I'm worried about, it's..." They shook their head, tried to dislodge whatever stuck like gunk to the inside. "I don't know what town I'm going back to."

"What do you mean?"

Like a child, they pulled their knees tighter up against their chest. "Goldcliff might've lost their sheriff overnight." Their voice cracked and then just kept crumbling as they went on, "And I might've lost the only person in that town who thought I was worth a bright future."

"You really think he's dead?"

"I don't know!" The meat of their palms pressed hard into their temples, hard enough to hurt. "I've tried not to think about it, but..." They couldn't have thought about the unthinkable even if they'd wanted to. Even on still nights, when thoughts of Bane inevitably came up, they quickly became background noise as Hurley tried to determine in their mind how long four more cans of beans would last them. In the past weeks of scraping and rationing, of seeking out the barest sources of shade and water, they had managed to busy themself with thoughts of whether they and Sloane would make it out alive. Now that that seemed like a certainty, every other uncertainty rushed them, tried to smother them. "But if we had such a hard time, the rest of my posse must have, too, and they had so much less than we did. I could've done more, should've gone out looking for them or--"

A sound came from the back of her throat that seemed almost scolding. "Come on. You would've just screwed yourself over along with the rest of them. Probably me too, now that I think about it."

"I don't care! I swore to be a part of that team. Bane was counting on me, and now the gods only know what happened to him." They pressed on their eyes. "I could've done something."

"Maybe, maybe not. Like I said, I don't think it would've helped much."

They whipped their head around to look at her, blinking the watery film from their eyes fast. "How can you say something like that?"

"'Cause it's true?" She must've seen the way Hurley's mouth hung open, then, because she sighed and said, "Look, sorry. I get that it must be a lot. But I don't see how convincing yourself it's your fault is gonna help you now."

"I take it you haven't lost someone important to you," they said snappishly.

"Not really, no."

"And I suppose it's because you're such a proud loner, isn't it? I suppose it's because you don't care about anything but yourself!"

"Guilty," she responded mildly.

Hurley almost said they were sorry. That they didn't mean that. But they weren't so sure that they were sorry, at least not yet. Anyway, she didn't seem the least bit abashed by it.

The guitar was still in Sloane's lap, but what she was doing could hardly be described as playing. She strummed chords seemingly at random, with long pauses between each, without forming a melody. Each note was an unanswered call sent out into the dark, out of communication with all of the others.

Several minutes into this, they murmured aloud what they couldn't stop thinking. "I want to make it up to him."

Her long fingers came to a halt again. "How?"

"I don't know yet. But he believed I could do what he did. It seems like he thought it's what I should be doing. I could keep the peace."

"And when you say 'keep the peace,'" she started, "you mean you're going to do just what he did? Keep on hunting?"

"I know people are going to think it's crazy, after how it went this time." Their voice was more than a little forceful. "And it's not like I'd be going after you again any time soon, if that's what you're thinking. But someone needs to do it. You know, Bane was one of the best. Not just in the sense of how many people he brought in, but in how he went about it, his whole philosophy. Innocent until proven guilty. He really believed that. He never wanted to play executioner. Always tried to bring people back alive and then let the law decide fairly."

"Mmm."

  
  


They looked at her, at her hunched-up shoulders. She had the instrument pressed up against her chest, her arms around it and her knees up in front of the soundhole, like she was guarding it. "What?"

  
  


"Nothing." She picked at the strings.

  
  


"No, come on, what?"

  
  


She turned her head away, as if she thought she could make them disappear if she pretended they didn't exist for long enough. It was at that time that they decided to dig their heels in, and would have said it was against their better judgment, if they had better judgment. When she finally glanced back, they were still staring at her, prompting a long groan. That seemed like a sign of imminent victory.

  
  


She kept looking on, at nothing in particular. Then, quietly: "He would've liked to see me dead."

  
  


"What? No way!" They jumped up, to his defense. They put themself right in her line of sight. "I know the posse was rough with you, and I'm sorry about that, but you have to believe me when I say he wasn't like that. He was taking you back for a fair trial!"

  
  


She made a noise of contempt in the back of her throat, almost snarled. "Fuck's sake, I knew you wouldn't get it," she grumbled.

  
  


"What? What don't I get?" This was decidedly what one might call poking the bear. But they weren't about to stop. There was a familiar heat in their cheeks and words speeding out of their mouth. "Tell me so I can understand."

  
  


"Look, never mind. Sorry I asked."

  
  


They waited for something else, and when they didn't get it, continued, "I refuse to believe he wanted you dead."

  
  


"Gods, why do you always have to have the last fucking word?" She tossed her guitar to the side, and it made a hollow sound. They were surprised it didn't break. "You've been a bounty hunter for how long? Signed up a month ago maybe? Not nearly as long as I've been hunted. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about."

  
  


"There's a lot you don't know. You haven't seen it from the side of the law."

  
  


"And you've never seen it from mine!" They almost jumped back when she spun on them. She was shouting, all of a sudden. "You didn't look him in the eyes when he grabbed me by the face to look me over. Let me tell you, I wasn't innocent in his mind. I was dirt. $1000 of fuckin' dirt. Not that I give a shit, no particular hard feelings for him, because what the hell else should I expect? They're all fucking like that!"

  
  


They shook their head slowly. "Well, do you think I'm like that?"

  
  


" _Yes_ , Hurley, I do!"

  
  


Oh.

  
  


Once again, they took a full-blown hit from her. This one came up on them from behind and dazed them, made them falter and stumble. Nausea shuddered right through the core of them and nearly knocked them down.

  
  


They weren't sure what kind of look they had on their face, but it must have been pretty damn pathetic. She glared at them for only a second longer before the hardness in her expression fell away like water running off a smooth stone. They found it ironic, and depressing, that they were only just getting good at telling what she was thinking. She had the same look on her face now that she had had when Hurley had found out her name--surprise, maybe even embarrassment at some formerly unspoken truth finally being brought into the open.

  
  


They watched her swallow and glance away. She went over to the guitar, dusted it off, and started fiddling with the tuning pegs--uselessly, since she did not strum any of the strings to check the sound, just turned them this way and that. She seemed to coil into herself. Hurley felt like following her lead. Crucially, she did not apologize. They would have liked to think it was out of stubbornness or shyness on her part, but even they knew. It was something she hadn't meant to say, but that didn't make it untrue. Again, they had believed, had hoped, that she thought just a little better of them.

  
  


Well, fuck her. They had done all they could for her, up to and including freeing her for her own safety, hadn't they? If after all this she still wanted to lump them in with the rest--even if, granted, they had been the one to catch her in the first place and had fully intended to put her in jail not a month ago--

  
  


This bothered them a lot more than it should have.

  
  


Finally, they heard her sigh. When they looked back at her, she had her head turned toward the sky, toward the bright fingernail tip of a moon, but her eyes were closed. "Look, you seem okay." Sloane paused, then began again. "Actually, I think you're decent. You don't seem to be faking it, anyway, and I don't know why you would fake it at this point, much as I've tried to think of reasons. So, yeah, sure, in that regard you're not like them, fine. But you're helping them, aren't you? At the end of the day, you're gonna keep helping all the people who think that way and who'd like to see me in a world of hurt, right?" The shrug she gave was heavy and helpless. The fury had fled her. It was just consignation to the truth. "So you asked a stupid question. As long as that's true, then yeah, you might as well be just like them. It wouldn't make a difference."

  
  


Before they had even managed to process all that, she spoke again. "You thought so too, didn't you? That I was a murderer, I mean. At the beginning. You did, right?"

  
  


They did not and could not speak.

  
  


"Yeah." The word was almost inaudible, withered as it left her mouth. Defeated.

  
  


"I didn't know you felt that way." It was as good as saying they didn't know what to say.

  
  


"Well, I've been at this awhile. They don't ever assume you're innocent. They wouldn't treat me the way they do if they did. So yes, Bane expected me to hang after that trial, a trial with a jury and a judge who, yes, would've walked in thinking I was guilty. 'Cause everyone already knows I'm guilty, or thinks they know."

  
  


"I don't," they answered at once, then quickly shook their head. If ever there were a time for choosing their words... "I was wrong to assume that about you when we first met. You're not a killer. I know that now. And...and I still can't accept that Bane was out to have you killed. I'm sorry, but I knew him, and I just can't. But I also believe you when you say you were hurt by people like me. And I'm sorry for that."

  
  


That was the instant that she looked back at them, quickly. There was surprise of a different sort on her face now. It opened her all the way up.

  
  


She caught herself a moment later and turned back to the guitar and shrugged so that their words would roll off her shoulders. "Well. I don't know if 'hurt' is the word. I'm just not keen on those fuckers inconveniencing me. I got places to be. I can't spend all my time holed up in a wagon. Or dead."

  
  


"Hey, Sloane?" They waited for her to glance their way again before they gently knocked their shoulder against hers. "I think you're decent, too."

  
  


Her grin just now had been wry. When they said that, though, and she looked their way, they thought they saw it change, and grow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spend a not insignificant amount of time daily thinking about characters being surprised by someone telling them that they're good for the first time and that's the mentol illness luv <3
> 
> Btw, the song that Sloane plays is "Friend of the Devil" by the Grateful Dead! No it's not a real period cowboy song but there are elves in this story and I can do whatever
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please comment if you care to and check me out @literalliterature or @adventuresloane on tumblr.


	7. i'm going home to see my savior

Both of them reached town by the following night, after seeing the steady approach of the buildings in front of them for hours. They all looked the same. It seemed, somehow, that they should have changed, since everything else had in the meantime.

  
  


Hurley had told her that they had some supplies they could give her before they left, if she wanted them. It sort of shocked them when she agreed to wait.  _ Nobody's around, _ she'd said,  _ and even if they were, there aren't many who'd know me at a glance without the mask on. If you can sneak me in, I'm there. _

Nevertheless, she insisted on waiting right inside their little house while they gathered the stuff, presumably so she could ensure that they wouldn’t sneak out and call on anybody to come and catch her. They couldn’t expect a complete lack of doubt, after all.

  
  


When they had everything, they came out to find Sloane with her hands tucked beneath her arms, shifting on her feet. "Hi. Are you feeling okay?"

  
  


"Good as I can be, I'd say. This is sort of a den of vipers I'm in here." She grinned at her laconic way, but her gaze kept flicking to the windows like a trapped insect flying into the glass. Even in the poor light, they shone, alert. She was ready to bolt into the night and evaporate into the blackness outside, if needed.

  
  


"You're gonna be alright. No one's even around this time of night, usually."

  
  


"Yeah. I mean, it's fine, it's not like I'm..." Sloane trailed off as she looked into the pouch that Hurley had passed her. "Holy shit, how much did you give me?"

  
  


"Kind of a lot. I hope you can carry it all."

  
  


She pulled out the lantern by its heavy metal ring to look at it, wide-eyed. "I can't take all this. It's yours, isn't it?"

  
  


Hurley shrugged. "I got my house here. And the general store and even my neighbors. I can get whatever I need. You're gonna be out in the middle of nowhere for gods-know-how-long. I want you to be ready."

  
  


With a scoff, she said, "I've been alright out there with far less, believe me." She looked down, in thought. Suddenly she appeared still, really still, rather than simply poised to flee. Then she turned to Hurley, and there was that soft glance again. She looked bared. "But...but thank you. And hey, something to remember you by, yeah?"

  
  


"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" they asked with a smirk.

  
  


"Well, truth be told, I'm not sure I could make myself forget any of this if I wanted to."

  
  


"I don't think I want to. I'll..." They rubbed their neck. It wouldn't do either of them any good to say they would miss her. Thrusting their regrets out into the open would change nothing. "I just hope you're going to be alright out there."

  
  


"Desert's where I've always done best," she said with a small shrug. "I'd rather be out there than in a town that wants me dead."

  
  


"Right. You sure I can't...put you up somehow? I could hide you at my place for a couple days. Just to recover, after the time we've had."

  
  


"Nah, much too risky." Her chest heaved with a breath, and then suddenly her grin returned. "But hey, that truce of ours can only last so long, huh? Might run into you again one of these days when you're trying to catch me."

  
  


"Oh, so you're scared of me now?"

  
  


"Given that you're almost the only one who's managed to lasso me so far? Think I have a right to be."

  
  


Hurley chuckled, then bit their lip. "I mean, I hope at this point you know I wouldn't do that to you again. I...the truce doesn't have an expiration date, you know?"

  
  


"Well, we'll see."

  
  


For another moment, they stared at her solemn profile, turned toward the outside. Soft streaks of bright moonlight touched the smooth curves of her cheekbones and prominent nose. It softened her edges, made them vague. It seemed that at any moment her form could fade from view altogether, become just as intangible as the light. All of her was precious, something Hurley hardly ever had a hope of seeing again in their lifetime. The thought made them weak in the way that hunger made them weak, a scraping at the lining of their belly from the inside.

  
  


Before they could dwell on the feeling, she took one step forward. Hurley waited. They felt like they might frighten her off if they made a move. Sure enough, when she didn't see them move, she raised her hand in the air, then brought it down gently onto their shoulder.

  
  


Nothing happened.

  
  


After several moments of silence, they finally cocked an eyebrow at her. She said, "Um." They felt increasingly hot despite the falling evening temperature as she gave them a couple little pats on the shoulder. "Take...take care of yourself, alright?"

  
  


They laughed lightly. "Oh, Sloane..." They paused, then put their hand over hers and squeezed lightly. "I wish nothing but the best for you, you know that?"

  
  


"Yeah, alright." Her mouth was practically pressed into her shoulder. "So...bye, then?"

  
  


"Yes."

  
  


Both of them stood there.

  
  


After a beat, Sloane seemed to remember something suddenly and pulled her hand away. "Right, uh, I'll just--"

  
  


It didn't happen grandly. There was just the unassuming sound of pebbles in the street skittering under the leather of a shoe, hardly louder than a whisper. It would have been wholly unremarkable were it not the only sound aside from that of their own voices. They whipped around and took a moment to comprehend the situation now in front of them, materialized out of the darkened alleyway. There was a slight figure, and his gun was pointed Hurley's way, and they were almost startled for their own sake before they realized that he was aiming high.

  
  


Lil' Jerry looked at Sloane like a kid would look at some fantastic zoo animal.

  
  


"Geez," he said slowly. His nasal voice was full of the same wonder that they saw in his eyes. "I heard you were pretty bold, Raven, but coming back here is so stupid I've gotta be impressed."

  
  


Sloane's hands scraped against the wooden wall at her back. It seemed that she intended to claw into it, searching for a way to secure herself to the hard facade. The muscles in her jaw moved and bulged. She said nothing. There was that same look in her eye from a few weeks and a world ago, when she was a different person to them and they were a different person to themself. She looked as she had when they had first caught her, in the raw moment when she was open as a new wound before hardening. She was made of fear, as, they now knew, she had been then.

  
  


Jerry flicked his head toward Hurley, then, as though they had just popped into existence in front of him. "You're alive?"

  
  


That was a good question. Was this really happening? Judging by the way their hot heart was trying to drill its way straight out of their ribcage, it seemed so.

  
  


"You know, you could've just brought her to the jail," he said, sounding irritated. "I dunno how the hell you managed to drag her back here, but you might quit playing the hero now and trying to do everything yourself. You know, I wouldn't have even come to help if I hadn't seen the lamp on in your win--"

"What are you doing here?" they blurted. "How did you even...did Bane come back with--"

"Bane? You know as well as I do that that man's got a hide like an elephant. Nothing could kill him, hardly." He shook his head. "You know, he wanted to go back and look for you after that storm. We managed to convince him he was crazy, given he could hardly breathe after we got caught out in it." As if on cue, he coughed.

"He's alive," Hurley whispered, thinking it was to themself. "He's here." Then, quickly, they looked over at Sloane and found her looking right back at them, taking her eyes off the gun for the first time.

"He is, no thanks to you." He had already grown bored with Hurley, it seemed. He was turned away from them again, and the curl came back to his lip. He took a few steps toward Sloane. "Listen, I'll make you a deal. I let you have all the credit for bringing her back, so long as Bane knows I'm the one who actually brought her to the jail." He was right up against her now, and it was with a relaxed slowness that he pressed the barrel of his revolver up into the soft flesh just behind her chin, underneath the tongue. Her head tilted up until her neck was fully exposed and she looked down at him like a frantic mustang, flaring nostrils, white-eyed. She looked all around for an exit route but kept bringing her gaze back to the gun. They could feel the ice of the metal on their own skin like a phantom pain.

  
  


He pulled cuffs out from the back of his belt and the jangle of them was like frantic bells and this wasn't how it was supposed to go. The two of them hadn't traveled this far for it to end like this, and it would not, could not.

  
  


"S..." They started speaking before they knew what they were saying. Rattle of metal in their ears. "Stop it. Stop it!"

  
  


Then there was a single great bang and, next to Jerry's feet, a hole in the floor with a starburst of black around its edges. Sulphur-scented smoke got in their eyes.

  
  


She was staring at them. They tried not to look back. They focused on their line of sight as they stared down the barrel of their pistol at the man in front of them.

  
  


"Hi, Jerry," they said politely. "Yes, I'm alive alright. Do me a favor and drop that weapon, okay?"

  
  


He blinked. He blinked again. They couldn't really blame him. "What're you--"

  
  


"It's gonna be fine. Just back away from her."

  
  


"Why..." He looked between them and Sloane. They saw him thinking about turning the gun on them.

  
  


"Jerry," they said with a sigh, "don't. You know I'm quicker."

  
  


He did know. He shook his head fast to try and dislodge the knowledge. "You wouldn't--"

  
  


"I wouldn't?" They took one measured stride forward. Of course they wouldn't. It was all bluff. But all they needed was for him to believe it.

  
  


He didn't seem to, entirely. But there was more of fear than suspicion in him, more of an instinct to quit while he was ahead. That was one of the few things they'd always liked about him. It took him only half a second more to drop the gun and raise his hands.

  
  


"Thank you." They turned to her then. "Sloane, come here."

  
  


She took another slack-jawed moment to react, looked at him once, and then went over to Hurley. They pressed the grip of the gun into her hand. Her fingers were loose, and she nearly dropped it before pointing it at Jerry. Her form was terrible. They bound his wrists as she held the revolver on him.

  
  


They thought about dropping him inside their house, then thought better of it. They had to be sure someone would find him in the morning--they wouldn't have left him tied for days. So they dragged him the extra feet to the sheriff's office, where, amidst his cursing, they threatened some and apologized more and ultimately left him locked in a utility closet. Then they walked away so fast they might as well have been jogging, blew right past a waiting Sloane outside, and pressed their forehead against an outside wall in an attempt to cool it, wondering exactly what it was that they had just done.

  
  


"Hurley." Sloane's whisper was loud, full of urgency. "What was that? Why did you do that?"

  
  


"I don't know," they said from inside their hands. This was the aftermath of a dynamite blast. It had happened in a moment, and now there was no way to retrieve the fragments that had been scattered to the winds. No fixing this.

  
  


"You don't know?!" Sloane let out an incredulous huff. "Hurley, do you have any idea what you just did? To your whole life? Come sun-up, it's open season on you. Fuck, they even know what you look like." The longer she went on, the more she sounded almost angry. She kept making sweeping gestures with her hand at nothing in particular, at everything, at where "they" lurked. "Gods almighty, Hurley, they're gonna hunt you! They'll come after you with--with dogs--"

  
  


"I'm aware, Sloane!" they snapped back. "I've been 'them,' in case you forgot. I'm not an idiot."

  
  


"Well, shit, then what were you thinking?!"

  
  


"I..." They stopped. They hadn't thought, really. It had been like pulling their hand from a hot fire. There was no time to think about why they did it. They just knew they had to. It felt like self-preservation, even though it hadn't been themself they were protecting back there. "I guess I just got to liking you when you weren't in chains, and I didn't like the idea of you being back in them."

  
  


She visibly jolted, took a step back.

  
  


For awhile, neither of them said anything. Finally, they shrugged. "I just did what I thought was right."

Even her steps were hushed and gentle as she padded back over to them. She looked at them a long time. "You really did do that for me, didn't you?"

They chuckled a little ruefully. "Well, yeah. I don't think it's going to benefit me a whole lot, at least."

  
  


They saw the corner of her mouth lift by degrees. It was far more than her usual, tight-lipped, mischievous grin. She was open-mouthed and open. They had indeed done what they felt was right.

  
  


It lasted only a moment. She cleared her throat and said, "We've got to get you out of here."

  
  


"'We?'"

  
  


She had half-turned around, but paused to look back. "Well...if you're willing to come." More assertively, she went on, "Just so you could lie low for awhile, until the fuss around here dies down, and then, I don't know, figure out what to do as you go, I guess. Seems like kind of your M.O. Anyway, I got a bit of experience running from authorities, as you might recall, and my assumption is you could use some help with--"

  
  


"Sloane?"

  
  


"Yeah?"

  
  


They snorted, blinked away the hot prick in their eyes. "Of course. If you'll have me, of course." They went up to her, then stopped short. "Can I hug you?"

  
  


"Oh...fine, but fast. I want to move."

  
  


They did, and her arms stiffened as she wrapped theirs around her. But only a little.

  
  


She slid out of their grip before long. "I'm going to get ready to leave,” she muttered. “You get what you need. I’ll be back soon.”

  
  


"Sloane?" Hurley went to grab her hand as she turned away, but pulled back at the last minute, only brushing the thin fingers. "Be careful, alright?"

  
  


There was a snort in response. "You got a lot of fuckin' nerve telling me that, after that stunt of yours." But she could be seen smiling through the night.

  
  


What she had commanded them to do was easier said than done. They had a lifetime and then some of trinkets and heirlooms that they had brought back from their first home. None of them had value, because back then, right before they'd left, anything worth anything had had to be sold. Only the priceless things had been left untouched. These were what they had carried with them where they went, despite their weight.

  
  


They didn’t know how to prioritise. Everything was of equal worth to them. When they imagined leaving something behind, choosing their sister’s old doll over the tin-type of their mother, they imagined erasing the memory attached to the abandoned item. They couldn’t possibly prioritise their memories.

  
  


But Sloane would tell them that they couldn’t take all of it regardless. Sloane traveled light.

  
  


They came outside, bag full and eyes wet, to see her creeping their way with an already saddled horse.

  
  


"Did you steal that?"

  
  


"No, I wished upon a star."

  
  


"She's so pretty!" Hurley let the horse smell their hand and rubbed under her chin. "What's her name?"

  
  


"I tend not to name them. Sometimes I have to leave them behind with no notice. I don’t like getting attached.”

  
  


“Oh.”

  
  


“Anyway, you ready? Or do you need to do anything else?"

  
  


“I…” They gripped the strap of their bag until their knuckles hurt. “No. No, we have to leave.”

  
  


They were hardly on the horse’s back before Sloane started off. They went and went.

  
  


It astounded them when their head began to nod forward, at least as much as a person half-asleep was capable of being astounded. Being bounced in the saddle by the horse's trotting underneath them, with the thoughts of what they had just done nipping at their heels, they would have thought that the adrenaline would make them immune to exhaustion. But after maybe an hour of riding, the town that had been receding from them all this time had fallen off the edge of the earth, disappearing from the precipice of the horizon, so that they could believe it had never existed at all. They felt the swirl of thoughts in their mind finally condense and settle into something thick and heavy at the base of their skull, weighing them down. The dull thudding of hooves in the sand had the effect of waves washing up repeatedly, endlessly.

  
  


They must have begun to slump noticeably, because the horse's hoofbeats slowed and quieted. "You tired?" Sloane asked.

  
  


They barely bothered opening their mouth to slur, "A little." They were leaning back in their seat. Idly, they realized that they were warm, and that that, more than likely, was why they were able to sleep.

  
  


The horse stopped. Behind them, Sloane shifted and moved away a little as she shuffled around, and suddenly their makeshift backrest was gone. They caught themself before they could fall all the way backward. "I kept telling you not to keep watch the whole night and let me have a turn," she muttered as she reached for a rope at her side. "No wonder you're exhausted now."

  
  


They watched her hands slip under their arms and loop the rope around their waist. "What are you doing?"

  
  


"That's so you don't fall off." She passed the cord behind her back and knotted it in front of their belly, binding them quite literally at the hip. "You ever slept on the go before?"

  
  


"No, not really."

  
  


"Well, try it. I'm gonna keep riding through the night. You can just rest."

  
  


"What about you?" they asked around a yawn. "You're gonna get tired."

  
  


"I'll be alright. I've slept fine the past couple nights. Anyway, I've got to stay up. I'm the one who actually knows where to go." Out here, without fire, there was no light. They could not see the face of the woman inches from them as she craned her neck towards the squat mountains to the east, with a silhouette blacker against the black sky. As their eyelids drooped, everything blurred. They became unaware of where she ended and the sky began.

  
  


Then she turned toward them and got huffy. "Sleep, dammit."

  
  


"Okay," they mumbled, and fell back again but did not hit anything hard.

  
  


Hurley could not be sure how long the pause was before they felt her exhale into their thick hair. She gave a soft, short "Hyup" to the horse, and the rhythm began again, as fast and steady as before. They faded quickly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My dudes the hits keep coming these past several weeks but the lesbian cowboy train waits for no one. Here's a chapter I've been looking forward to putting up!
> 
> Thanks for reading, especially those of you who have been here since the earlier chapters and left reviews. Receiving them is truly the highlight of my week. Feel free to interact with me on tumblr @literalliterature or @adventuresloane as well!


	8. i'm only going o'er to jordan

The next thing they knew, the air was soft and blue as a child's blanket.

Even after a few slow blinks to clear the sleep from their eyes, the world looked nebulous, still shapeable. The day had been only half-formed, and the light of the sun had not yet come to solidify it. By degrees, they got their bearings. They were not moving anymore. The rocking movements of the horse beneath them had ceased, and now they found themself lying still on the slightly scratchy fabric of a quilt. Their quilt, which they had intended to give Sloane before everything that had happened last night.

Oh, yes.  _ Everything _ had happened last night.

That thought, along with the sound of shuffling and the burble of water, prompted them to sit up. The Appaloosa appeared in their field of vision, free of a bridle and any other tack aside from the hobbles placed around her feet. She swept along the ground with her head hung low as she picked at the tough shrubs nearby, more greenery than they had seen out in most of the desert. They were by the riverbank.

They rose slowly, stroking the horse's neck as they passed, and continued down the small slope of the bank. They found her there by the water. Her jacket was off and sloppily folded by her side as she bent, sleeves rolled up and feet beneath the surface, washing the dust from her arms and legs. She leaned over to splash water in her face and blew out the drops that had run up her nose, straightened and shook her head like a dog to cast off the water that had soaked the tips of her hair.

Hurley did nothing. It wasn't long before one of her ears swiveled back, and then she turned to look behind her. The grin she gave them was dry. The dry ones came most easily, it seemed. "Well, good morning."

"Morning," Hurley replied as they stepped over to her. "You really went the whole night?"

"Yup. We should keep on going after this, too, once the horse is rested up a bit." She slowly leaned back and lay on the ground with a yawn. "Put even more distance between us and those assholes in Goldcliff."

They looked back at the prints faintly visible in the dust, which could be traced back along the bank. "Are we following the river?"

"Nah, we're here for a stop before we head to the canyons near Chulk. East of here." She nodded in that direction, towards where the blue-gray sky was a bit brighter. "I'd say we got maybe two hours before those fucks wake up and start trying to follow our trail. Said fucks are expecting us to follow the obvious source of water all the way, but we haven't been and we won't be. I took us the long way through the Flats before I brought us back around to here. Harder to track us through all that rocky land."

"Mm." They rolled those ideas around in their mind like a smooth stone between their fingers.  _ Our _ trail. Track  _ us _ . They were included in that, now. They were one of the people meant to lose, one of those with every chance against them. Meant to run and to run until they couldn't anymore. They thought of old sayings: that one must be lucky to avoid the wolf each time they entered the woods, but the wolf only had to be lucky enough to catch them once.

"So...how are you doing?" she asked. 

"I don't really know yet," they murmured. Whatever future they had imagined for themself before last night was hardly even worth considering now, for all that it was still possible. They were starting from nothing again. This time, at least, it was their own fault. 

It was awful, in a way. They should've been scared, they guessed. But, maybe because it had yet to sink in, they couldn't quite bring themself to feel it. Whatever fear they may have had just felt like more of the buzzing energy in their gut. 

Open space stretched out before them. To run and to run. It might not be the worst thing in the world. 

With a bashful sort of pride, they tried, and likely failed, to hide their smile by looking at the ground. "Can you believe I did that?"

"Of course I can't. You were out of your fucking mind." She snorted. "Gods, his face when you pulled that gun on him, I thought he was gonna piss all over the floor."

"Me too!" They giggled, and were too late to stifle it.

"He was talking such a big game, and then all of a sudden he didn't have you to back him up and he looked like a kicked puppy."

"Poor lil' Jerry. He wasn't even that bad, just grumpy."

"Eh. Fuck 'im." She glanced their way. "Seriously, that, ah, that was pretty damn great back there."

"It was!"

"Yeah. Um, I can see how you're a force to be reckoned with in all those rough taverns, huh?" She paused. They waited. They had a feeling they knew where this was going, or at least was trying to go, like a moth continually bashing its face against a glass lamp trying to get to the flame. "Anyway, considering I'd be kind of screwed if that hadn't all gone down the way it did last night, well, you know. It'll just be nice having you out here for a bit--"

"Are you trying to thank me, Sloane?"

She had been quite methodically peeling off her cuticles as she spoke. When they asked the question, she did not turn their way, but her ears snapped back for just a moment. They thought they caught a touch of red in her cheeks. "Sure," she said slowly and smoothly. "Thanks."

"You're welcome," they answered with a grin. "Though really it was just in exchange for you leading me back to civilization."

"Well, that was payback for you letting me go, so maybe we're just past keeping score, huh?"

"Fine by me." They released a breath up into the lightening sky. The air that they took in smelled cool and clean. They had gotten used to it. "I'm not as scared as I think I should be. Is that bad? Should I be?"

She swallowed. Momentarily, her eyes flicked away. That could have meant something, or it could have been that she had felt like swallowing and flicking away her eyes. Either way, she then proceeded to flash her sly grin. "Why, you looking forward to being chased down?"

"Kinda."

She gave a deep belly laugh. "Yeah, you would, wouldn't you?"

"Is that crazy?"

"No crazier than anything else about you." She wove her fingers together to stretch her arms above her, then lay back down on the ground with her head resting on her hands. “Anyway, I don’t think you have to be that worried.”

“Really? Why not?”

“Because, little Red, I’m damn good at what I do.” Her hat had fallen back into the sand and left her eyes unshaded, so that they could see the cocky glint in them. “No one knows how to make it out here better than I do. You’re very lucky.”

“Oh, is that right?”

“Sure. No one’s about to fuck with hgkk!” She got cut off by the horse, which, having returned from the water’s edge with its snout soaked and its mouth full, came up and proceeded to dribble all over her face. Hurley didn’t even try to keep from cackling while she scrambled to sit up and shoved the animal’s face to the side.

“Oh my gods,” they breathed, getting up to pet the mare’s nose. “Oh, Sloane, I love this horse.”

“That makes one of us,” she grumbled, face still dripping.

“Well, now we have to keep her."

"Do we?"

"Yes! You wait, I'll train her until she's perfect. I've done it before. What should we call her?”

“Not keen on calling her anything but an asshole at the moment.” She meandered over to them to look for a dry cloth.

“No, we should give her a nice name. Like Carson.”

“Dickbag.”

“Frida.”

“Jerk-Off.”

“Sapph--” And then they were forced to sputter and spit at the icy splash that hit their face. They swiped their palm across their face to clear the droplets from their eyes before looking to the side.

Sloane, with her arm wet and red-handed, gave them a look of glee an instant before she scrambled to her feet and ran. Which was wise, as a second later Hurley sprang up to chase her up and down the banks.

* * *

They traveled all through that first day and the following night, stopping only to rest the horse or their own aching bodies. The two of them passed bread through their hands while they sat on the ground during breaks, passed a canteen between one another while they were on the horse's back. The wind on their face when they were galloping took some of the edge off the midday heat.

After nightfall, Sloane determined that they were probably at a safe distance from any pursuers by now. They didn't have to go as fast or as long from here on out. They gave the horse a break, with only one or the other of them on her back at a time. After awhile, both of them ended up going on foot. The ground beneath them was barely visible outside the circle of lantern light, but it felt firm beneath them.

On that night, Hurley spent a lot of time with their head tilted back and upward, no matter how much their neck would hurt the next morning. The sky seemed to be made up more of stars than space. They didn't know the sky at night could be that color. Even moonless, it was lit up.

They studied it a lot. It kept them alert. So did talking to Sloane as they walked, even if Hurley did more of the talking, both on that first night and on many others following. She joked here and asked questions there but mostly let them speak, and she seemed content to do so. They wondered about that, as both of them spoke of getting supplies and of Hurley's wilder, pre-Goldcliff days. Out here, with darkness and quiet ahead and behind, it seemed like you could forget you were a person after awhile, not just an extension of that deep black. The land could disappear you before you knew it. Hurley talked to remind themself that they were still there and solid, threw out their voice and heard the echo just to make sure they could still have an impact on the world. Sloane was different, it seemed. She didn't worry about whether she disappeared. It was a wonder she still had a voice to speak with at all, after all the time she'd spent alone in this place. They wondered if it had been hard at first.

The coyotes had never left, of course. The first time that the screeches and whoops reached them again, Hurley froze. They scanned all around them for lights like false stars in the dark, for pairs of glowing eyes. They found none. That seemed even worse than finding some. 

Just then, they heard Sloane come up behind them on the horse. "Come on," she said, beckoning them up. They took her hand. 

As soon as they got on horseback with her, she passed them the lantern, then snapped the reins and set off running. She took a jagged path, and they couldn't see what was in front of them until they were already on top of it, flying over it. Hurley felt the thrill of it down to the bottom of their guts. Moving so fast into the unknown of the dark made them feel weightless and vivid as summer lightning. They sparked.

And in front of them, in the light provided by the lantern, they caught glimpses of thin, furred forms darting out of the way, harmless as mice heading back into the shadow. By the time they stopped, the horse was breathing heavy, and they were both laughing, the only creatures laughing for miles and miles.

Most days, around sunrise, they ended up near some water source to replenish themselves. Sometimes it would be a proper oasis or even the odd water pump that someone had planted there long ago. Sloane, though, didn't like to stay in these places for long. They were places where people liked to congregate, she said. They'd be expected to stop there. Instead, she preferred to find the water hidden underground. When she did, the two of them would often stay near the spot for the remainder of the day. 

Most often, the places she chose seemed as barren to Hurley as any other they passed over while they were walking, but nearly always the water would be there. By now, they trusted her not to lead them astray, but it didn't strike them any less each time. "How do you do it?" they asked her. It was something they asked a lot, when they were digging for water as they were now and at many other times. 

Her trowel paused in the earth as she looked up at them. Then she said, "Maybe you'll find out if you stick around long enough, Red." So they watched her carefully as she drew water from stones, trying to see what she could. 

They rested at midday. Sloane warned them about staying under the blanket that they hung as a tarp over their heads, that even their sandy brown skin would burn. She told them to sleep while they could. Sometimes, Hurley did. But they had always had trouble keeping their eyes closed any time the sun was out. So they walked with the horse to take a look around, or else they sat nearby while she slept. The least they could do was keep an eye out for the both of them. She breathed steadily.

The desert's breezes were always strongest around dusk as the air above the earth began to cool and move. More than once, they caught her sitting and just leaning into the wind. She closed her eyes and turned her cheek to it, like she was accepting a kiss from it. Hurley understood. They started to do the same thing. It came on like a blessing to take away the heat.

Once, as they gathered up their things around sunset, they saw a handful of large birds come down from the sky and land nearby, looking for food. The sunlight bounced off their black feathers. "See?" she said, pointing to the ravens and looking a little wry as she did. "They don't have a problem out here. Why should I?"

And after a time, the rhythm changed again. They started traveling only in the morning and evening, so the night was once again for resting. It was harder for Hurley to stay awake then, but they did as much as they could, waiting in the dark for whatever may come. 

The moon was full and high in the sky when Sloane came up to them and said, "Hey, you should've woken me up to take watch. It's my turn."

"I wasn't tired," they lied. 

"Yeah, sure. Just lie down and go to sleep."

"Why don't  _ you _ go back to sleep? I said I can stay up."

She snorted. "Fine, whatever. I'm not tired now either, so I guess we'll both just be up for no reason." She sat down beside them and followed their gaze as they stared upward. "You know anything about them?"

"Some. I don't know a lot, though."

"You want to?"

So she told them. As she named the constellations, they tried to keep up, lying down on their back to better study the sky. She spoke quietly, though, and the more they tried to trace paths through the stars, the more they got lost in the weave of them. As the lights blurred in front of their closing eyes, their last thought was that she had gotten them good tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm BACK and I wrote this chapter while listening to the instrumental tracks from Spirit on repeat for DAYS baby!!!
> 
> In all seriousness, my apologies for no chapter last week! We're getting into the part of the story that will include the most new material, so it's likely that updates will be more sporadic from now on. Brand new chapters are already underway, though, and I'm excited to bring them to you!
> 
> Anyway thanks again for reading this far and I hope you enjoyed the lesbians having a nice time.


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